The University of Tennessee's plans to move 237 head of cow from a research pasture in Knoxville to a pasture at the Martin, Tennessee, satellite campus were thwarted temporarily when a Mrs. Vera Cain, 57, armed with a .12-gauge pump-action shotgun and a Civil War-era bayonet, obstructed cattle haulers from leaving the site with their load. Mrs. Cain, who lives with her husband, a dentist, across the river from the research pasture in Knoxville, had, according to her husband, grown accustomed to spending long evenings gazing at the cows, sometimes through her dead son's stargazing telescope, sometimes through opera glasses, after she taught her afternoon piano lessons. She would put on a Mozart recording and drink a dry white wine on the patio. She would toast the cows, count them, name them, and hold one-sided conversations with her favorites deep into the night.

Following an hours-long standoff with university researchers, the PI, who knew Cain from previous encounters, reluctantly called in sheriff's officers, who, from a helicopter, shot Mrs. Cain with a tranquilizer dart, and the cows were on their way. The university's pasture, now totally free from obstruction, is set to be developed into a three-hole practice course for the men's golf team.


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