A rampant cow that had been terrorising the rural community of São Pedro do Sul in Moldes has finally been brought to heel by a brave lady farmer.
Maria de Jesus Neri, 65, did what no one else appears to have done in her community. She used lateral thinking.
“It wasn’t easy,” the farmer’s wife told newspapers.
The cow was apparently running around the village with a rope round its neck, terrorising people and thundering across vegetable plots.
Maria de Jesus went after the animal with her farm vehicle.
“I managed to drive over the rope,” she explained, and this ‘trapped the cow’ which the quick-thinking woman then tied neatly to a nearby olive tree.
It’s here that her ingenious plan ran into difficulties, as Maria de Jesus then called her husband António who “decided to run the animal into a corral”.
His daredevil scheme saw him “get a belting from the cow’s horns”.
“It’s lucky she didn’t get me in the leg,” the farmer winced afterwards. “That’s one dangerous animal. She could kill somebody.”
Needless to say, if António had not tried to improve on his wife’s achievements, the animal could have stayed tied expertly to the olive tree until back-up arrived.
GNR police finally “took hold of the case” writes Correio da Manhã newspaper, omitting to report whether this involved any further contact with the animal’s horns.
