Free-range cows at large in Los Angeles

Nine feral bovines rediscover their instincts in the Santa Monica Mountains.

By Hugo Martín, Times Staff Writer
12:00 AM PST, December 06, 2005

SOMETHING with hoofs moves behind an oak. A twig snaps and dry grass rustles as a horned animal breaks into the clearing. Could it be one of the fugitive cattle of Cheeseboro Canyon, the elusive bovines that park rangers say have eluded capture for more than five years?

Shrubs and branches around the oak tree shudder, but instead of a cow, a four-point buck bounds away.

The search for the wayward cows continues. Long before Reggie the alligator made headlines by evading trappers at Lake Machado near Harbor City the feral cattle of Cheeseboro and Palo Camado canyons in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area stayed one hoof ahead of authorities. Though rarely seen, rangers insist the heifers are holed up in oaks and chaparral in the canyons and rolling hills near Simi Valley.

One warm morning, I load my backpack with Gatorade and ride a mountain bike deep into the canyons to find these bewildering beasts. How hard could it be? They're not cheetahs or gazelles, they have no camouflage and they are as conspicuous as a parade float and as swift as rush-hour traffic. By definition, a bovine is ox-like, slow, dull, stupid.

But by day's end, I feel slow, dull and stupid. I never saw a single cow. I'm not alone. The stealthy cattle have become experts at outwitting and outmaneuvering park officials and ranchers.

Five years ago, 15 head of livestock escaped from a pen in Ahmanson Ranch and disappeared into the national park. A break in the search came in September when a wildfire stripped away vegetation and forced the cows into the open. A rancher who owns the cows baited a pen with corn, hay and other cow chow and snared six hungry animals.

Nine renegade cattle remain — the smartest ones left in the herd — and continue to evade their captors.

How can livestock — 1,000 pounds of hoofed sirloin — elude capture for five years in a popular park adjacent to a busy freeway?

Bill Plummer, an animal science professor at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, says farm animals unleash their wild instincts after an escape.

For example, pigs that sneaked into Mt. Tamalpais State Park in Marin County several years ago turned into cagey feral swine that continue to evade traps and hunters.

The cattle of Cheeseboro and Palo Camado canyons probably adopted a similar born-to-be-wild mind-set, Plummer says. By now, he says, the cattle see humans not as providers and protectors but as another predator to avoid.

"When they become feral, they don't make a distinction between what is trying to eat them and what just wants to catch them," he says.

To adapt to their surroundings, he says the animals have become thinner and wirier. (Maybe that's where low-fat milk comes from.)

"These cows won't look like the cows you normally see," Plummer says.

As I set off on my cattle quest, I ask some visitors, regulars to these mountains, if they've seen any cows. That's when I get "the look." It's the same look you might receive if you told friends your brain was picking up radio transmissions from the Andromeda galaxy.

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