When cows attack

You will never see Cow Week on the Discovery Channel, but statistically you're more likely to be killed by a cow than a shark. From Popular Mechanics:

Between 2003 and 2008, 108 people died from cattle-induced injuries across the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's 27 times the whopping four people killed in shark attacks in the United States during the same time period, according to the International Shark Attack File. Nearly all those cow-related fatalities were caused by blunt force trauma to the head or chest; a third of the victims were working in enclosed spaces with cattle.

While the ongoing battle between cow and man is overwhelmingly one-sided (and delicious), the people who work closely with cattle take major risks. "I've been kicked, I've been pushed, I've been charged," says 22-year-old Margaret Dunn, a graduate research assistant studying animal science at Iowa State University. "Like what they say about dogs, they can smell fear." Once, while she was attempting to inoculate a newborn calf as its mother stood nearby, another cow came out of nowhere and knocked her over. Dunn has survived these assaults, and they have not dissuaded her from planning to acquire her own dairy cows someday. The dangers of a farm are just "an occupational hazard," she says.

Have you hugged your dairy farmer today?