Table Mountain and Our Encounter With Cows

Clover and I went back to Table Mountain near Oroville again this spring.  There's a little trail, visible in the lower left corner and slightly visible just above the purple flowers, that leads across the butte and to a waterfall at the edge.  Even though we came here within two days of our visit last year, we saw completely different flowers this time.  I would say the purple flowers must be lupine, but in miniature.  All the wildflowers on table mountain are tiny, and usually only just a few inches off the ground.  One difference this year was the number of cows grazing right along the trail's edge.  Clover was curious about them on the way out to the waterfall, but she left them alone.  On the way back though, two little cows were running, and so of course she started chasing.  Pretty soon she had about 50 cows on the move.  I was yelling like crazy.  She came back happy as could be and not even realizing she had done something wrong.  It was the leash after that.  At one point there were two cows right on the trail.  By this time Clover had an entirely different definition of a cow as something fun to chase.  So she was pulling at the leash, and these two bold cows were looking at us with very mean eyes for cows.  There was a little bit of a stand-off.  I was worried they were going to charge us.  They would sort of start forward and then pull back.  I didn't know cows could be so aggressive!  So by the end of the hike, we had both reassessed our feelings about cows.