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BACK TO THE OLD HOME

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jun 23, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 25.

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BACK TO THE OLD HOME.

FARMER FOY, says Our Dumb Animals, lived just over the line in McKean County, Pennsylvania, and he sold several head of cattle one spring to a cattle buyer of Crawford County. Among the lot was a three-year-old heifer, born and raised on the Foy farm. Great difficulty was encountered in getting this youngest animal away from her native place, but the drover at last succeeded in driving her along with the rest to the railroad station, whence they were all shipped to Meadville, by Salamaca, a round-about course of 150 miles.
Four weeks later Farmer Foy was awakened late one night by the crying of a cow. The crying was so unusual and so loud and persistent that by and by the farmer got up and dressed and went out to see what it all meant. He could scarcely believe his eyes when he discovered that the animal that had been making all the fuss was the three-year-old heifer that he had sold to the cattle buyer a month before. She was standing at the bars of the barn-yard and calling lustily to be let in. She was promptly let in, and she lay down in her old place as if she had never left it.
Next day it was discovered that the creature was thin and footsore and plainly worn by long travel. Foy, being a native of Crawford County, was a subscriber to one of the Meadville papers, and in the week’s issue that came the day after the return of the heifer, he saw her advertised as an estray, she having broken out of her inclosure one night of the previous week.
A reward was offered for her return. That the heifer had found her way back to her old home, over a distance of at least 100 miles, in traveling which it was necessary for her to cross the Alleghany River at least three times, as well as other large streams, there could be no doubt, and that in her anxiety to get back she had not spared time to do much eating by the way was shown by her emaciated condition. How she, a strange cow, traveling through a strange land, managed to escape detention by some one as an estray, and by what marvelous instinct she found her way back to her native pastures, are things no one will ever know. It is hardly necessary to say that Farmer Foy promptly returned to her purchaser the price he had received for her, and that the animal remained all the rest of her days on the farm to return to which she had made so remarkable a journey.