Their Great Horns Also Seemed To Attract Electricity

“When the longhorns could be gathered up and driven, it was theorized that the heat from the herd’s mass attracted lightning. (Such was the radiant heat from a large herd that a cowboy’s face would be blistered on whichever side of the herd he’d ridden by the day’s end.) Their great horns also seemed to attract electricity, so that lightning and ground-electricity would bounce around from horn to horn throughout the herd – a phantasmagoric burning blue circuitry. The cracking of the cowboy’s whips and the twitching of the cattle’s tails also emitted sparkling “snakes of fire.”
Rick Bass, The New Wolves: The Return of the Mexican Wolf to the American Southwest

Richardson, Texas

 

2 responses to “Their Great Horns Also Seemed To Attract Electricity

  1. I’ve never heard such a thing. It’s fascinating. First I thought, “Is that true”? Then I thought, “I don’t care. I want it to be true.” I can see those herds, like roaming Tesla coils.

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