"Labels on meat products sold in the U.S. could soon read like a sad mini-biography of the ranch-raised beasts."

A wild gray wolf continues to wander all over Northern California, a year after crossing the state line. The wolf, named OR-7 by wildlife biologists because he's the seventh male in the Oregon pack that has been unwillingly fitted with a radio-satellite collar, has traveled more than 2,000 miles back and forth across the top of California in search of a mate and its own territory.

Like many young males today, OR-7 has a Twitter account. But that is not why cow farmers in rural parts of Northern California are so angry. Cow farmers hate any kind of predator and any kind of wild nature—the last wild [...]

"She mooed, out of the blue; she was definitely her own cow." —Aggie the cow has passed on.

"The search is on in Bavaria for an Austrian cow named Yvonne who has been on the loose since May when she escaped from the farm where she was being fattened up for slaughter. The wily runaway has become a local celebrity of sorts in the southern German state. She has outsmarted police officers and has become known for grazing at night, like a deer. But her days of freedom might soon come to an end, as officials in the Mühldorf district have decided that, for security reasons, she can be shot."

It's a cow! It's a panda! It's the result of a genetic manipulation that is a testament to all the super-important uses we are putting Science to these days! It's PandaCow! Man, it's going to be another great year for wacky animal stories, I just know it.

Someday soon we will be able to safely eat burgers composed of bits of dozens of different ground-up cows as well as their feces, because the cows themselves will be immune to E. coli! Thanks to vaccines, and ingenuity. And no thanks to "bureaucratic delays in Washington." Those fatcats! Again! So all the problems are now basically solved except for the solving.

"The experience of dying at a slaughterhouse is 'an enormous ordeal' for cattle. A farm in northern Germany is proposing an alternative: shooting the livestock in the places they live. Many believe the method provides a stress-free death for the animals."

"The French are known to like their beef, and they also like their wine. In the southern village of Lunel-Viel, in the Hérault department in southern France, some farmers have taken the next step and are feeding wine to their beef cattle on the principle that if French beef tastes good now, it can only improve with a bottle of Saint-Geniès des Mourgues."

Here you will find a picture of a cow stuck on a road fence.

Is this Germany's prettiest cow? Sure, why the hell not.

Finally, we have an answer to the age-old question of who would win a fight between a bear and a cow? Although this one seems a little unfair, because the cows gang up on the bear. Better luck next time, little fella. Also, good morning!

A British medical researcher has put forth a new theory on the disease that claimed Jane Austen's life. While previous speculation centered around Addison's disease or lymphoma, "Katherine White of the Addison's Disease Self Help Group has written an article for the British Medical Journal's Medical Humanities magazine in which she says that Austen probably died of tuberculosis caught from cattle." This postulation is actually borne out if one reads letters Austen sent to her family at the time, as well as the original ending of Sense and Sensibility, which was changed because it was thought to be too bleak.

Here you will find some photos of a calf with a birthmark on its head which resembles the Lone Star state.

It is rainy and dull out there this morning and not a little bit raw, although it will get warmer. It's Monday, the start of a new week, at the time of the year when we're all doing our best to convince ourselves that things will get better. They won't, but it probably doesn't hurt to pretend that they will. In the meantime, enjoy these curious cows and the puppy that entrances them, because, really, if we can't spend a minute or two appreciating the wonders of nature what hope do we have of even making it to Tuesday?

Here you will find a picture of a cow with its head stuck in a ladder.

Seriously, with all the technological advances we've made in the last two decades, how come no one has invented an "unsee" button? Anyway, if I have to know about this, so do you. We're all in it together. [Shudders.]

In an experiment to determine whether or not watching video of the Swiss Alps will make cows do their cow thing in a more efficient way, a Russian farmer has rigged one side of his shed with 40-inch LCD TVs so that one row of cows can watch footage of the Swiss Alps, where the grass is green and the skies are blue. The cows on the other side are afforded no such diversion.

The farmer is monitoring his cattle to see if the TV-watching cows are more "happy and productive."

"EXTINCT cattle brought back to life in crazed experiments ordered by Hitler have done what he never could – and invaded ENGLAND."

Do click through; there's a map and everything.