The third incident.
After the huge argument over "who gets to steal the cow" the previous night, the cow was on everyone's mind. It really wasn't intended to continue any further I don't think, but we were all telling the story. I was out doing work in the yard, telling my hilarious story of the previous night's episode to Shannon, when her older sister came out and overheard part of the story. So, after retelling it, Chris declared that she HAD to go. Fine by me - we were down one person for that night due to Marcus working, plus it's not very often that I get to do stuff with Chris - so I thought it was pretty cool that she wanted to go. That was it - cow #3 (which Shannon named Matilda) - was to be built that night. Chris had to go to the hardware store for something, so she refurbished our supply of black paint (I must note, she was very careful to select the proper finish for cow spots - flat black), and stopped by later that night. This cow I started building earlier so that it got done around 11:30pm, as we were getting quite tired from the previous nights and had to get up early the next morning. So we set off about 11:45 up to the "cow spot" for another "udderly ridiculous steak-out". :)

This one was quick. Man, we didn't expect it to happen so fast - this was getting to be a little too consistent. Justin was in the backend of the truck with the camera on a tripod, taping through the window in the canopy (See, we're getting really setup now); me and Chris were in the front seat of the truck. We probably hadn't been there for 10 or 15 minutes - when 4 guys (about 25 yrs old) come walking down the side of the highway (this is a big road - 5 or 6 lanes). They walk up to the cow, check it out and laugh a little. One in front, one in back, two of the guys pick up the cow and they all go running diagonally down the highway (across and about 200 feet down) carrying this cow!! It's relatively early still (~12:20), so there is fair amount of traffic. They actually had to stop a few times with their cow to avoid being run over :). So, there's 4 crazy guys running through traffic down the highway carrying a cow! We thought it was pretty funny (3rd time), but Chris had never seen anything like this before and she was busting up laughing so hard at these idiots :). We followed them over to where they had run off the highway into a bar's parking lot, found a big white van where they had just walked away from and parked nearby. We walked up to the van, and tada, you look in the windshield and they have a cow in their van :). Since they took it so fast and really didn't let very many people enjoy it first, we left a little note asking if them to return it to the corner later that night "and the police won't be contacted" :). (Uhh, yes sir, they are the ones who stole our cardboard cow) :-).

Tabatha was gone, Tabatha's Revenge was gone, and now Matilda had joined them in cardboard cow heaven (cardboard cows don't die, they just get stolen). But not to worry, hope has not been lost... This is only the beginning.