Cow Tipping, Peeing on Electric Fences and Hearing the Corn Grow

URBAN LEGENDS, FACTS, AND THOUGHTS ABOUT FARM COUNTRY

by Phantomimic

All rights reserved © RAGG

I have been fortunate that my wife comes from a farming family and that

many of her relatives are still in the farm business. As a result of this over

the years I have been able to do some rather interesting things that as

someone from the city I would have otherwise not done. I have gone ice

fishing in sub-zero weather, drinking homemade liquor to keep warm. I have

gone fishing in the summer while floating downriver in a canoe drinking

beer. I have been to state fairs and seen up close huge prize winning

specimens of hogs and cattle as well as square dancing tractors, and I have

played cow pie bingo. I was invited to go hunting but could not bring myself

to heed the 3 AM wake up call. However, I did participate in the butchering

of a deer and in the making of the so called "Bambi burgers". I've ridden in

combines, gotten lost in cornfields with 6 foot tall plants, and hung out at

small town bars, shooting pool or playing euchre, and rooting for the local

football team. I have seen demolition derbies, monster trucks, and yard butts,

and I have sailed on the mighty Mississippi River in a paddleboat.

But visiting the countryside is a unique experience for me not only because I

can relax from my hectic city life and do wonderful fun stuff but also

because I get to talk to farmers and their families and discover the depth of

my ignorance about life in the country. Part of this ignorance has to do with

the basic facts about some of the food we eat. For example I like pickles but

not cucumbers and I always thought they were from two different plants

(they are not), I also thought mayonnaise was a milk product (it's basically

olive oil and eggs) and I believed that 1% milk was milk which had only 1%

of the fat that regular milk has (regular milk is 4% fat, therefore 1% milk has

25% of the fat of regular milk). These misconceptions and others are not

uncommon. Over the course of little more than a century, the United States

has gone from being a country where about 40% of the population was

directly involved in farming or ranching to only 2% today. Of course most

people know certain basic things such as that milk comes from cows, eggs

from chickens, and bacon from pigs, but if you go into further detail many

will start shooting blanks. However, most farmers are kind folk who will

politely avoid rolling their eyes or laughing at you when it is obvious that

you don't know something and they will patiently explain the intricacies of

planting crops, milking cows or raising pigs.

However the how and why of foodstuffs is just one aspect of our ignorance

of the ways of the countryside. Over the years this ignorance has given rise

to a blend of fact and fiction generating a series of stories about life in the

country. In this article we will examine 3 such stories in a tour that will take

us from the humorous to the thoughtful, if you have read this far you are

welcomed to come along.

Cow Tipping

Most farmers will just smile and shake their heads or laugh if you ask them

about cow tipping, only to reluctantly add later that they know someone who

claims they know someone who once did it. Ironically, cow tipping seems to

have originated in the countryside when naive city folks were asked by

mischievous farmers to try to achieve something that is impossible. In that

aspect cow tipping is no different from "hunting for snipes", in other words,

a wild goose chase. But what is cow tipping?

The quintessential cow tipping deed normally starts when a group of

inebriated young men decide to head for the countryside at night and locate a

field with cows. As cows supposedly sleep standing up, the men proceed to

sneak up on the unsuspecting bovine and then rush it from one side pushing

the animal and making it fall or tip on its side. The urban/country lore is

awash with cow tipping stories which have now permeated the internet and

other media. For example there is a (fake) cow tipping scene in the movie

"Heathers" and You-Tube features several videos that deal with alleged cow

tipping or near cow tipping events.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, all this is bunk. As any farmer will tell

you cows do not sleep standing up and they are animals that have a keen

sense of sight and smell. If you try to approach a cow it will simply move

away from you. Another issue is that cows are pretty massive animals. Some

physics calculations indicate that if a cow were to stand still you would

require the force of two people to tip it and if the cow were to react quickly

to your pushing as it most certainly would, you would need five people to tip

the cow over. Cow tipping could even be dangerous if a cow decided to fight

back or if the would-be cow tippers in their drunken daze mistook a bull for

a cow.

But the most important question is: Why tip a cow? I guess that hearing the

"thud" that a large bovine body would make against the ground must be

something viscerally appealing to the alcohol addled mind. Or maybe the

whole concept is just so funny that it seems a worthwhile pursuit instilling

some young people with a sense of purpose otherwise lacking in their lives.

Whatever the reason, cow tipping is a myth. As of this date not a single cow

tipping event has ever been convincingly documented.

Peeing on Electric Fences

Now we come to a sensitive topic and not just for the obvious reasons. Most

people know that if you touch an electric fence you will get a shock. So the

question arises, will you also get a shock...err..."there" if you pee on said

fence? A few city folk and some from the country find the answer to this

question by accident while relieving themselves next to a fence which they

did not know was electrified. Of course these are just accidents, what we are

interested in is in those brave souls who actually do this on purpose.

Peeing on electric fences is attempted mostly by young men or boys. I say

young men or boys and not young women or girls, either because males

have a greater ease, due to their "physiological architecture", to direct a

stream of urine in whichever way they want, or because they are more

adventurous and daring, or just because young women or girls at this age are

already not stupid. Be it as it may the answer to the question is "Yes". If you

pee on an electric fence, as long as the fluid stream is unbroken, you will get

shocked. Not only are there several YouTube videos documenting this fact,

but the issue was also examined in episode 14 of the TV series "Myth

busters" and was found to be true.

Interestingly most of the men you talk to who live on or have visited farm

country will deny ever peeing on electric fences. For many it is a topic that

makes them uncomfortable. But this is the wrong way to go about it. What

you have to do is round up a group of them at a bar, buy them several rounds

of beer, get them talking about their adventures while they were kids, and

then bring up the issue. Immediately someone will confess to having done it,

or rat on one of their buddies, or remember someone who did it.

So why is it that as kids some of us risk a shock to that most vulnerable part

of our being? What draws us to that electrified wire out in the field? Is it

because we can? Is it a rite of passage, a stepping stone of sorts to manhood

(or what would be left of it after the deed)? Why do we risk our lives as men

climbing mountains, or boating rapids, or flying to the moon, and our germ-

lines as kids peeing on electric fences? The answer I guess is the same one

given over the centuries by adventurers, explorers, and pathfinders, "because

it's there".

Hearing the Corn Grow

The last story is not as well known as the others and many would label it a

"farming legend". The idea is that under the right conditions corn can grow

very fast, up to 4 or more inches per day, and when it does so it makes a

particular sound. Thus you can "hear" the corn grow. I have asked a few

farmers who have raised corn all their lives about this and none of them have

ever heard any distinctive sound coming from their cornfields. Many people

claim that the alleged sound of corn growing is nothing more than the

rustling of leaves or ears against one another as a result of small gusts of

wind that make the corn stalks sway. However I did get to meet one

particular farmer who heard his corn grow, in fact, he was one of my wife's

relatives. Let me tell you a bit of his story and in the process inject some

philosophy into the narrative.

I will start with a small digression. Let me ask you some questions. How

much of the process that leads us to being happy has to do with being

content? How many of us that could be content are indeed content? How

many of us that could be truly happy are indeed happy? And most

importantly, do we want to be content and happy? I ask these questions

because in our hectic societies dissatisfaction seems to be considered the

engine of social and personal progress. No sooner do we attain a goal than

we are looking for the next challenge. Failure generates frustration and

frustration motivates us to try harder. People with no ambitions and a desire

to make them come true are looked upon as complacent. The mantra is "be

all you can be", push yourself to the limit and use your talents to improve

yourself; anything less is mediocrity. All this is fine motivational talk, but,

will we achieve true happiness this way?

The reason I ask these questions is that this particular farmer I knew was a

truly happy person. He was the most content man I have ever met and he led

a long and joyful life. He plowed the land, harvested his crops, loved his

wife and together they raised their children. And that was really all he

wanted out of life except for one particular thrill that he would look forward

to. When the right season of the year came along he would come in from

working on the farm, have dinner with his family, and then sit on the porch

with his children, and hear the corn grow. When he first told me about this I

frowned and asked him what he meant by this. He explained to me that when

corn plants grow at an accelerated rate, the central growing region at the tip

of the cornstalk (the growing point) gets too big for the ring of slower

growing plant material around it. As a result of this pressure buildup the ring

around the growing point eventually breaks making a faint popping sound.

He told me that this did not happen in every cornfield, the conditions

including the air temperature, the makeup of the soil, and humidity have to

be just right, but he was blessed in that his farm was located in such a place

where this happened often enough.

So there you have it. Can you hear the corn grow? I can't tell you with hard

evidence that this is the case because I have only met one person out of

about a dozen who reported hearing it. But perhaps the veracity of this story

is not as important as its meaning.

As I write this I am boxed in my city house with locks on the doors

surrounded by crystal, asphalt and cement. But when I imagine this farmer

relative sitting in his porch with his family in the still quiet of the night

listening to the chorus of tens of thousands of plants reaching up to the sky, I

can't help but to think I am missing something. Now don't get me wrong, my

life has not been bad, I have had many happy moments. But over the years

all the worries and anxiety of my frenzied city life have taken a toll on my

sanity and my health. It seems there are always projects to be done,

deadlines to be met, bills to be paid and more and more money needing to be

earned just to keep up. Perhaps I need a change, maybe a less demanding job

in the country and a house close to some cornfields.

That way I too will get a chance to hear the corn grow.

The picture of a Corn Field in Ohio is an Image for public use under creative

commons license by Graylight at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/graylight/240543285/

Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

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