Flying Cow Leaves Two Police Cars in Flames A cow came flying out of its trailer, sent DPS and police scrambling, and left two police cars going up in flames.
Watson told News 4 WOAI, "We believe the gate of the cattle trailer came open, and the cow, for lack of a better phrase spilled out onto the Interstate. It was pretty chaotic for a while."
Several cars hit some of the cows. One cow died. DPS troopers called for backup. That's when one officer was nearly run down by a speeding truck, carrying two illegal immigrants inside.
Seguin Police were out looking for those illegal immigrants. They parked their cars in the hot grass, burning two of them including that brand new 2006 Crown Victoria. Everything inside was destroyed, including tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment designed for the patrol cars.
"You start off with kind of a bizarre accident with these cows spilling onto the interstate. That leads to other accidents, that leads to a car chase, that leads to a foot chase," Watson recalls.
I'm trying to figure out how parking in hot grass set the cars on fire. I would have thought that police cars would be designed not to spontaniously combust.
Hot, dry grass + hot engine block = grass fire.
grass fire + rubber hoses = burning rubber hoses.
burning rubber hoses + gasoline = burning cop car.
?
It sounds like they pulled the cars off the road into long grass, which came into contact with the hot engine/muffler/whatever of the car, catching fire, and then the car (now parked on flaming grass) itself caught fire.
I wouldn't have expected a grass fire to ignite cars, but what do I know; maybe the heat ruptures the gas tank, or rubber hoses (is antifreeze flammable? brake fluid almost certainly is) or something like that...
*Oh*, he meant the rubber hoses that are part of the car, not the ones that are part of the cops' equipment.
The [[Catalytic Converter]] is by far the hottest part of the car, reaching 750 Celcius or more. They're shielded but the outside of the shield is still plenty hot enough to start dry grass on fire. And of course they're mounted on the bottom of the car...
google search: "catalytic converter" "grass fire"
This makes me think of an accident report that simply read, "Dark night, black cow."
I don't understand how the cars caught fire either. Perhaps the news story accidentally omitted a paragraph:
"Unbeknownst to anyone, William Wallace had laced the fields with oil beforehand, so the slightest spark - say, from a cow falling into one of the famous piles of flint that Texas highway shoulders are famous for - would ignite the grass and anything parked therein."
It is unbelievably dry in that area of Texas currently from what I understand. Just dry tall grass touching the underside of the car's engine/exhaust evidently was enough to set it on fire.
Just goes to show, all cows should bounce freely. Not be confined to evil trailers.
hmm...a think, juicy burger sounds really good right about now
So how long until BouncingCow gets a slider for explosion frequency? Exploding should leave some, uhm, "beef" sliding down the screen.
Evidently, this was a bizarre publicity stunt staged by fans of the Bouncing Cow screen saver, who were afraid it might be axed in the Great Screensaver Cull (<lj user="jwz"> passim).
That was my first conclusion, and surely the only viable one.
the hatterCattle. The better word is "cattle." If you've indeed been in law enforcement in rural Texas for fifteen years, Detective Sergeant Maureen Watson, you've either not been paying much attention, or you have the command of language of a drunken six-year-old.
"For lack of a better phrase" is commenting on the word "spilled", not "cow".
Unproven. "Spilled" is fine in that context, "cow" for a plural is not.