From Bob Quixote, puzzled by a cartoon in the New Yorker — as so many of us so often are!
The quixotic one says: I hope you can help me with this cartoon from the latest New Yorker. I’ve been studying it for way too long but cannot figure it out. Why are the cows cops? Is there a hole under the torn-down fence? Why didn’t the robber just hop the fence instead of taking time to take down a section of the fence? Thanks
Phil of the editorial team adds: That’s a cattle guard, common in the West: you can drive over ‘em, but they stop cattle.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Editorial Phil has nailed this one.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I guess the sort of Holstein markings, and maybe the shape of the heads and snouts, is why we accept those critters as cows. But looking at the smaller size, and the familiar nasty vernacular usage against police, are we sure they might not have originally been pigs?
LikeLiked by 2 people
@dana72k: I believe you are correct, further note the hoofs. They look more pig like than cow like to me anyway.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Along some (smaller) highways in the western U.S., instead of installing steel rails, the cattle guards are simulated with white stripes painted onto the road surface. Apparently cattle hate the real rails so much that they don’t want to risk getting a hoof stuck in the fake ones.
P.S. Re: cows/pigs: Steed is British, but I have no idea whether that makes a difference. However, in German, the slang term for “policemen” is “the bulls” (“die Bullen“).
LikeLike
Farm boy here. These are clearly cows. Notably, they have udders. They also have bovine, not porcine, body structures, legs, heads, and tails, and they are too big to be domestic pigs; they are on the small side to be cattle, but not completely out of range. True, they have cloven hooves, like pigs but not cows, but it’s more likely that the cartoonist made a mistake on that rather than everything else. Nor would the cattle guard joke work with pigs instead of cows.
Admittedly, I have not been a farm boy for, let’s just say a while, but I have not forgotten what cows and pigs look like.
LikeLike
Kilby: Ah yes, “bulls” for police isn’t unknown in the U.S., but for railroad police. Maybe there should be a train track in the background.
Heh, and I’d missed that the cartoonist is “Steed” — so when you wrote “Steed is British”, I first wondered why I’d never heard British cops referred to as horses!!?
LikeLike
We have cattle guards in the midwest, too. I expect they’re anywhere there are cattle. And it’s quite easy to walk across them. If you’re not cattle, that is.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Cattle Guards, The cattle won’t walk on them as they have hooves. Some are like this pits with usually old rail road tracks or pipes welded and fenced on both sides. Sometimes even just white lines painted on the road (looks like a guard) is enough to make them not willing to cross.
I have installed about 10 of these at the Turkey ranch where they use cattle for grass control and extra $$$$.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Cattleguards were common sights where I grew up… but I wonder how true that is of the average New Yorker reader. Conversely, where I grew up the only New Yorker you might see was a Chrysler.
LikeLiked by 1 person
True, they have cloven hooves, like pigs but not cows, but it’s more likely that the cartoonist made a mistake on that
Cows also have cloven hooves. The only typical farm animals without are various equines.
LikeLike
Why don’t cows walk on them? They get their big stupid heads stuck in fences all the time. It seems that every cattleguard would have three cows, chests to the metal, legs hanging underneath, moo-ing piteously.
LikeLike
@ MiB (11) – The gaps between the rails are not that deep, just a few inches, and the rails are usually spaced so that the hooves don’t fall through; instead, they get (painfully) pinched between them. The experience with one hoof is probably bad enough that no cow would want to risk a second try, let alone get stuck on all four legs.
LikeLike