I've heard it said once, and heard it a second time again recently, that cows can go up stairs, but they can't go down stairs.  When I first heard ths from a friend of my daughter who lived on a farm, my thoughts went immeditely to how this fact could make for a great practical joke.  I imagined my teen years in the late 1970s.  We had a cranky and somewhat crazy neighbor named Priscilla.  I fantasized about going back to that time and place, and how my high school buddies should have left the suburbs for the country one day when old Priscilla was at work.  I imagined buying a couple cows and going back to our residential neighborhood, sneaking into Prissy's house with our bovines, bringing them up her stairs and leving them there.She'd never be able to get them donwn: they can't descend steps.  The next time she called to complain that our dog was barking during the day, I could reply, "Maybe she is, but we keep hearing mooing coming from your bedroom early in the mornings.  Your house is starting to smell like manure, too."

Then, when I heard again that cows can climb but not descend a staircase, My mind went in a different direction. How was this fact ever discovered in the first place?  Cows live in barns, which we all know are street level flats.  True, barns have haylofts, but who would bring a cow up into the  hayloft?  That's where the hay is kept for the winter.  Bringing a cow into a hayloft makes as much sense as putting a toddler in one of those trees where elves make Keebler cookies.  Is it that the little cookie monster couldn't leave the tree or wouldn't?  Same with a cow in a hayloft.

Furthermore, hylofts don't have stairs, they have ladders, and I'm pretty sure cows can neither climb nor descend a ladder.  I have a neighbor who put a rope swing in his hayloft so his son could swing down to the floor after playing in the loft.  Can cows use a rope swing?  I doubt it.

The fact is, the only building on a farm with stairs is the farmhouse, leading up to the bedrooms.  How drunk did the farmer have to be to think THAT was a good idea? "Hey, Esther, I was thinkin': the worst part of my day is gettin' up at 4:00 and going out into the dark, cold barn to milk Bossy.  But I think I have a solution..."

Of course, Old MacDonald would be pretty hung over the next morning, and I envision him being awoken with a splitting headache to the sound of cow hoofs on his hard wood floors and mooing in his ears.Trying to lead Bossy back out of the house, he discovers cows can't go down a flight of stairs. Serves him right for his over indulging the night before.

But even then, it wouldn't prove cows can't go down stairs, only that MacDonald's cows couldn't.  For this to be a scientific fact, experiments would have to be done on a much larger sample size of cattle with a wide variety of stairway designs.  Thousands of cows.Hundreds of stairways.  Which leads me to wonder: "where are all these cows now? " Where are all these buildings with cows held hostage in the attics and penthouses by their own physiological design flaw? I don't know, but  If 'I'd had my chance, there'd be a couple in the upstairs bedroom of a crabby old lady in my suburban home town.