A Connecticut dairy family is heralding the arrival of a cow with a white cross on its head. A Texas farming couple is showing an egg with a cross on it. Both are being cited as signs from God during this holiday season. Together they make for either a powerful message of the Almighty or a divine steak omelette.
Farmer Brad Davis has announced that the calf named Moses will be spared and not slaughtered, here. He hopes that the calf will draw attention of the public to the struggle of dairy farmers.
In the case of the holy egg and Pam and Tracy Norrell (here), they see a more conventional holiday message: “This time of the year, we get so taken up with the presents and money and we forget about the reason, I think he [God] was just telling us he is the reason for the season.”
It is not clear what the recent divine image on the iron portends, here.
The month: December. The place: A humble farm. The setting: Just perfect for an auspicious event.
On a cold, dark night in the wee hours of the morning, a baby calf was born. His nurturing mother, Fuzzy, welcomed him into the world by licking and licking his head — an act that obscured a special detail about the little guy that would soon generate headlines all over the planet.
“When we first saw the calf … the mother had licked the hair and it was all sideways and we thought it was a regular calf,” recalled Connecticut dairy farmer Brad Davis. “Then a little later on in the morning we went in and there it was, standing right out. It was really quite a sight.”
“It” was none other than the distinctive markings of a white cross on the newborn calf’s forehead. The image had quite an effect on Davis, Davis’ relatives and friends and families all around the dairy farm.
“The first night that he was here, when we shut the lights out that night late at night, the only thing you could see in here was that cross showing in the dark,” Davis told the local Norwich Bulletin newspaper. “It was really quite a feeling. It made the hair stand up on the back of my neck, actually.”
Davis’ 70-year-old father, Andrew Gallup Davis, told the Bulletin that he’s never seen a pattern like this on any of the thousands of calves he’s encountered in his lifetime.
“It’s not one you look at and you try to make something out of it,” he said. “It’s pronounced.”
Visions, visions everywhere
Maybe it’s the season, or maybe it’s something in the water, but people have been seeing religious images in the most unlikely places in recent weeks — and not just on the heads of baby calves. A sampling:
Also this month, a couple in the Fort Worth, Texas, area said one of their hens laid an egg bearing the image of a cross on it. The egg was unusual — not smooth like all the others — and it had an indentation on one end with what appeared to be a cross. The couple, Pam and Tracy Norrell, said they believe it’s a sign of encouragement during the holiday season. (They added that eating the egg is not an option.)
Grant Morris / AP
This photo, taken on Nov. 23, shows residue on the bottom of an electric iron owned by Mary Jo Coady of Methuen, Mass. Coady says it’s an image of Jesus Christ and a reassurance that “life is going to be good.”
Late last month, a Massachusetts woman who recently separated from her husband and had her hours cut at work said an image of Jesus Christ she discovered on the bottom of her iron reassured her that “life is going to be good.” The woman, Mary Jo Coady, said she planned to store the special iron in a closet and buy a new one.
In October, an Ikea furniture store in Glasgow, Scotland, made headlines when some shoppers thought they saw the face of Jesus on the wooden door of the men’s restroom. “It takes you by surprise. It is really clear in the wood,” one shopper told the U.K.’s Telegraph newspaper. “I was only heading to the toilet and found God. My wife thought he looked like Gandalf from ‘Lord of the Rings,’ but it is definitely more like the Turin Shroud.”
So what’s the deal with stories like these? Are such accounts simply bizarre? Funny? Deeply meaningful to the people who see the images — especially if they’re enduring tough times?
Basically, they’re all of the above.
Davis, the dairy farmer, told WFSB-TV he thinks the special marking on the baby calf may be a message from on high, although he’s still trying to figure out what that message might be.
He told the Bulletin that he hopes the image might mean milk prices will go up and the dairy industry will improve.
“The last couple of years have been the toughest probably ever,” Davis said.
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‘Not totally surprising’
Neighborhood children have become enamored with the little calf with the special marking on his forehead. They decided to bestow upon him a biblical — albeit Old Testament — name: Moses.
The calf is living in Sterling, a small Connecticut town on the Rhode Island border, on Buttercup Farm, a dairy operation Davis co-owns with Megan Johnson.
Johnson said Fuzzy, Moses’ mother, is a red-and-white Holstein cow, and Ferdinand, his father, is a Jersey. Both Fuzzy and Ferdinand have the reputation of being exceptionally friendly animals. Davis thinks the pair produced an exceptional calf.
“He’s got a different disposition from other calves. You can see it in his eyes,” Davis said. “He has a very kind look in his eyes. Like he has something he wants to say to you.”
Ric Grummer, chairman of the department of dairy science at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, told the Bulletin that it’s common for Holsteins to have white markings on their heads.
“I think what this is really ending up being is a coincidence,” Grummer said. “Sometimes that marking is in the shape of a triangle. Sometimes that marking may be very irregularly shaped. … Clearly, if you get a nice unique cross, it’s unique, but it’s not totally surprising that something like this would happen.”
Saved by the cross?
Aaron Flaum / AP
Dairy farm owners Brad Davis and Megan Johnson say they’ll do everything they can to help Moses enjoy a long, happy life.
Johnson said she and Davis will see to it that Moses the calf lives a long, happy life.
“We’re going to make sure he gets a good life and doesn’t get eaten,” Johnson told the Bulletin.
“We’d like to find him a good home where he can live out the rest of his life on pastures, you know, with somebody who cares for him.”
Davis quickly chimed in.
“We may get attached to him in the meantime, like we have with other animals here,” he said. “And he may stay here.”
This story contains information from The Associated Press.
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Jill
1, December 11, 2009 at 10:44 am
This story may seem off topic but it’s not. It is common for nations in crisis to become more irrational. Fundamentalism reigns in religion and completely insane ideas pop up just about everywhere. Here’s one from the UK:
—————–
That is something I’ve read also, once touchstone concepts which govern certain responses are removed you’re left with about a 50/50 chance of responding appropriately to the old stimulus. I guess if you build in certain various other limitations like a lack of education etc. the probability of making the ‘right’ choice would get even smaller.
I read an article recently about the level of resistance to change as it correlates to economic class the was interesting. I tried to look it up on the web but didn’t find it. I subscribe to various mags and after I read them I donate them to the local library for re-sale so I have to try to find the source material on the web, couldn’t find it, sorry.
The premise was that people in lower economic classes might be the first to embrace change that would influence their lot in life. The study showed just the opposite. People who had little to begin with were very resistant to change because they more fiercely guarded what little they had. That’s very logical and human when you stop to think about it. Beyond a certain point the possibility of losing what little you have becomes a matter of survival.
This is one of IMO the major factors driving the construction of the Teabagger movement. Look where the strength of the movement is both geographically and by class. The states that need the most help with health care are the states that have the most vigorous opposition to health care reform. This is not an accident and the usual suspects that put together the movement IMO targeted them very carefully. (May those architects burn in hell.)
This story may seem off topic but it’s not. It is common for nations in crisis to become more irrational. Fundamentalism reigns in religion and completely insane ideas pop up just about everywhere. Here’s one from the UK:
“Nursery-age children should be monitored for signs of brainwashing by Islamist extremists, according to a leaked police memo obtained by The Times.
In an e-mail to community groups, an officer in the West Midlands counter-terrorism unit wrote: “I do hope that you will tell me about persons, of whatever age, you think may have been radicalised or be vulnerable to radicalisation … Evidence suggests that radicalisation can take place from the age of 4.”
The police unit confirmed that counter-terrorist officers specially trained in identifying children and young people vulnerable to radicalisation had visited nursery schools.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6952503.ece
The Lunch Formerly Known As Daisy
(I can tell I’m having BBQ for lunch already.)
I thought it looked like the unpronounceable symbol that Prince took as his name. A certain sign of dark forces at work!
that does not look like a cross to me. more like a specialty hammer with a pry bar. maybe that is what they are referring to. Jesus was a carpenter after all.
If I get a say FFLEO, I’m voting calf. DISCLAIMER: I have a vested interest in not becoming Gawd-chow.
Humans are too high in cholesterol although if one looks at the methane/hot air output, both humans and bovine are bad for the environment.
Maybe this is a sign the RCC is supposed to use real meat to represent the body of Christ?
I’m thinking they’d expand their ranks by logarithmic leaps of the poor alone if communion was a steak to go with that wine. Maybe throw in a nice green salad and a baked potato.
“How would you like your Savior cooked this morning, my son?”
“Why I’ll have Him medium well Father, but make it well done for Lil’ Sally here. Kids can be a little squeamish about blood.”
Church would smell AWESOME.
But I’m from the Land of the BBQ Kings. I could be biased in that assessment.
Does that mean we must sacrifice the calf or our own Green Buddha as an offering to the gawds–
Wow, I wonder if this is really a Buddhist Monk in disguise?
Egg-cellent post! Very moo-ving.
Yes, I coined this when a daughter of mine decided to be a vegan. I was trying to get a conversation going and it was the only thing that I could think of at the time….
Vegan by proxy. lol
I’ll be using that one if I ever date a vegetarian again.
FF LEO,
I am a vegetarian by proxy. I presume that the Steak that I ate last night was from a cow and they are Vegans. I have never know a cow to eat meat, therefore I am a vegetarian by proxy.
On second glance, that blaze (marking) on that calf’s forehead look like,
A T-Bone Steak bone.
Mmm! Too bad I am a vegetarian…
There is legal–if not devine–precedent, Holy Cow has been around since 1966.
Holy Smoke! It aint No Joke!
It is amazing that people are so anxious to find some evidence that God exists. Obviously such people never got over the fact that Santa was a hoax!
Looking at this crazy world, filled as it is with war, greed, rape, pollution, incest, torture, global warming, etc, surely no sensible being would admit to making it.