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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   2794 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 21, 2024

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Given that there are unsupervised cattle in (some subset of?) Indian cities, what measures are people allowed to take if such a bovine behaves aggressively?

Cattle mostly get out of the way if you move towards them with confidence.

I can assert this is also true for humans, be it in the public canteen at my hospital or the London Tube.

Also on humans in cars. Approach a left lane hogger with speed and intent and hes likely to move over as opposed to slowly creeping up behind him.

Depends on what you mean by "aggressively".

I remember this one time I was enjoying a chicken sandwich by a river, and a bull wanted a piece of it. Cue me running like a madman around several benches, then climbing atop one. Then some middle aged gent came and kicked it, at which point it went off to touch grass.

Cattle here don't really attack anyone, though they do impede traffic and shit in inconvenient spots. But if they're in the way, nobody will complain if you whack them with a stick, that brings back memories of a time I was in Jaipur (I think?), and we went for a scenic ride on a tuktuk/auto down a 45° incline and multiple windy roads, with about 3 westerners who were dressed up in animal outfits, though I only recall this girl from the States in a fucking zebra costume (apparently they were on a dare to travel from the tip of India all the way to the south in that fashion), and halfway down our impromptu roller-coaster ride a bull blocked the way. Queue the driver getting out to literally beat it out of the way, once again with a handy stick.

I don't know whether the takeaway from this anecdote is that Indians are crazy for tolerating so many bovines, or that Americans are even crazier. It wasn't even a furry thing, more of a children's costume deal. I can only pray they didn't die of heat stroke before reaching Kanyakumari as they planned 🙏

They have a duty to retreat.

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