In the idyllic Bavarian countryside with the sun shining down on pastureland and forest, a deadly game is being played out. Yvonne is in hiding. The local authorities gave carte blanche for a shoot to kill policy, but this has been challenged in the courts and an injunction has been issued. The tension mounts. The injunction runs out on Sunday. There is hope that it will be extended, so all is not lost.
She has a price on her head. It currently stands at €10k, but she must be brought in alive according to the article in the guardian (1). You see, Yvonne is a dairy cow who at only six-years old has been judged more suited to the production of Hamburgers than Obatzda and has had her contract terminated. She went on the down low back in May and dodged in and out of the forest to avoid the hunters with their guns at the ready.
She has become a cause célébre with well-wishers from all over the world. Her protector is now an Austrian who paid the farmer €600 to take her into his sanctuary. Up to now, psychics and telepathics have failed to make contact with anything but her cowpies, although she has reputedly stared down one hunter.
So far she has been insensitive to the blandishment of Ernst, a local stud, the report says and now they are twisting her son Friesi’s tail to help trap his Mom' end her free-wheeling lifestyle and help her settle down to a sedate lifestyle in her place in the retirement home that is now waiting for her.
This is reminiscent of the valiant efforts of the Tamworth Two, the pair of ginger pigs that back in 1998 escaped from a UK slaughterhouse by swimming a river and heading off into dense cover. Like Yvonne, their notoriety ended with the offer of an easy life in a retirement home, this time courtesy of a UK tabloid in return for their story. Sadly, the boar died in May this year, just days after Yvonne got successfully away. His sister had died in October last year.
In 2003, the BBC produced an hour-long TV drama called “The Legend Of The Tamworth Two” (2). Will Yvonne be catapulted to TV stardom by Deutsche Welle I wonder?
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/24/yvonne-run-cowpat-clue-hide
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2004/03_march/31/tamworth_two.shtml
