Over the weekend, several counties in Texas were pummeled with storms that brought heavy rains, high winds, and softball-size hail. Storms in the Dallas–Fort Worth area were severe enough to cancel baseball games and concerts, and left thousands without power. In Central Texas, flash flood warnings persisted throughout most of Friday. Even last night, a storm system brought reported tornadoes through Dublin and Stephenville.
While intense, the rain was much needed for most of the state, which is still drought-ridden and recovering from years of dry springs and summers. But add something like 2.5 inches of rain in just a two-hour period, and you wind up with flash flooding the likes of which Lee County experienced on Friday.
As the rain rain rain came down down down all over the state, James Kalbas, a resident of Lee County, noticed something strange in the floodwaters. Standing atop a bridge, Kalbas captured footage of forty or so cattle, bobbing up and down and mooing occasionally, that had been swept away by the flash flood.
Don’t have a cow—none of the herd has gone on to greener pastures. According to KXAN, all members of the Lee County herd are now back on dry land at a neighbor’s property—probably a bit distressed—and have lived to graze another day.
Some say cows possess a special ability to predict a rainstorm and will lie down in the grass beforehand to prepare. Whether or not that’s true, one thing we do know is that cows do have the ability to swim. Lest ye forget, domestic cattle belong to the same branch of the genetic family tree as the water buffalo, an animal that spends most of its time in muddy water.
Either way, the moo-ving story of the little herd that braved the Lee County flash flood of April 2015 is certainly one for the history books.
(Photograph courtesy of ThinkStock)
