Woman 'lucky to be alive' after encounter with 450kg beast
The incident has unlocked a new fear for injured Cathrene Mieras.
A young woman claims she's 'lucky to be alive' after being head-butted by a 450kg beast.
Cathrene Mieras was walking her family dog on its lead through a public field last month and, mindful of nearby grazing cattle, she gave them a wide berth.
Out of nowhere the beast, a rampaging cow, tossed her to the ground - leaving her with a 'monster' black eye and a 'wonky face'.
The 26-year-old, who was listening to a podcast on her headphones, only noticed the enraged animal a split-second before it struck her, leaving her with no chance of escape. She was head-butted twice before her screams startled the cow who slunk away after the attack.
Cathrene feared for her life
"I thought it was going to kill me,” she said. "It's the most scared I've been in my entire life."
"I started walking into the field, and the next thing I remember is I looked up, because I was looking down at the dog saying 'good boy', and this big brown cow was just charging towards me.
"It dipped its head and headbutted me twice. The last thing I remember is this massive head hitting me.
Friends and family told Cathrene, from Cumbria, England, they’d never seen such a horrendous black eye.
Cathrene, who walks the same fields often, said she’d never been bothered by cows before.
"I was aware there were cows in the field, but have never ever been fazed, so I didn't think twice because I thought 'they're on the far side of the field and I'm on the footpath'.”
During the split-second attack, Cathrene narrowly avoided catastrophic injuries.
"One minute I was up, the next thing I was down,’ she recalls. "I scooped the dog up and ran back across the two fields until I was far away and that's when I got my phone out to look at my face on the camera. I thought that was my eyeball popping out of my head.
She rang her dad and boyfriend for help after she escaped and both couldn’t believe what they were hearing.
"I phoned my dad first and said 'I've been hit by a cow', but he thought I said 'car’,” she said. "I said the same thing to my boyfriend and he also thought I said 'car', because I think you don't expect to be hit by a cow."
Hospitalised over the incident
In hospital, Cathrene was given painkillers through an IV drip, before being sent for an x-ray. The pain in her jaw meant she couldn’t even eat solid foods and was forced to live off smoothies for weeks.
"It was two days before I could open my eyes again,” Cathrene said. "It was more the development of the bruise in the days after that was more shocking because it just seemed to get worse. When my eye opened it was full of blood and you could see the visible swelling on my jaw and this big lump on my eye.
Looking back, she said she didn’t realise how lucky she was.
“I started hearing all these other horror stories about cows and people being trampled and having much worse outcomes,” she said. “I'm lucky to be alive.”
Apart from a fresh fear of cows, she’s forced herself to return to the fields to walk the dog with a newfound appreciation for her life.
"It puts into perspective how amazing your own body is at adapting and overcoming," she said.
— Kennedy News & Media
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