A man in New Mexico who was woken in the middle of the night by “very loud” noises was shocked to discover the source of the ruckus.
Brooks Boyd, from Santa Fe, was roused from his sleep at around midnight by an unmistakable sound: mooing.
It was only when he checked his phone that he discovered the full extent of the problem waiting for him out on the front porch.
In footage shared with Newsweek by Ring, eight cows can be seen waiting on the porch outside Boyd’s home. They might be blissfully unaware, but the large animals give off an intimidating vibe, like a gang of four-legged debt collectors who have come to collect Boyd’s unpaid milk bill.
All jokes aside, while cows serve any number of purposes in our day-to-day lives, but what’s often overlooked is just how intelligent they are. A 2017 study published in the journal Animal Behavior and Cognition sought to delve into the unseen complexities of the cow.
Through their study, the scientists behind the research learned how cows demonstrated an ability to learn different tasks rapidly, possessed impressive long-term memory, could uncover hidden objects, identify one human from another and assess other complex stimuli presented to them.
Ring
That really only scratches the surface of what cows are capable of but it might go some way to explaining how seven cows ended up outside Boyd’s home.
Speaking to Ring about the late night visit from the cows, Brooks Boyd said: “They were from a ranch not too far from my neighborhood and had escaped from a broken fence. A gate or fence was down due to a car crash and the cattle escaped.”
“I heard the cows around midnight (we sleep with our windows open), they were mooing and it was very loud, that was what woke me up.”
What’s interesting, from a scientific point of view, is that cows typically sleep soundly from dusk till dawn.
However, this particular group went against that. Evidently they discovered the hole in the fence and, rather than following their normal routine of going to bed, decided to head off out and explore the local nightlife.
That decision led them to Boyd’s door and resulted in the hilarious footage captured on the security camera set up outside his home.
In the clip, one cow approaches the door, followed by a full herd of seven more. For several moments they can be seen sniffing at the plants and door, letting out audible moos throughout. They must be looking for fun and figured this was the place. Instead, they ended up back home, with the fence mended and their owner now keeping a watchful eye on them.
This isn’t the first time a large animal’s unexpected arrival outside a home has been captured on a Ring device.
In one recent incident two deer rocked up outside a property in Pennsylvania to eat berries. There was also the time a large bear decided to take a dip in the garden pond of a house in Reno. Another memorable piece of footage saw two moose leave a Washington homeowner terrified when they suddenly appeared at the property.