The Cow That Ate Our Airplane

The year was 1949. The town was Davenport, the center of wheat production in Eastern Washington and the second largest wheat producing county in the world. My dad, Paul Mitchell, having just been released as an Army Air Corps pilot went to work as an airplane crop duster spraying thousands of wheat field acres for weeds.

Anita and Bob owned a 1200-acre ranch of which half was on a hillside. The ranch was surrounded by wheat, but one long piece was left bare to act as an airstrip. They owned 10 Black Angus cows which were free range. This meant that the cows were allowed to roam the hills freely in the spring through fall months to find their own food. This suited nine out of the ten simply fine but there was one cow, Beula, who decided early on that there was no reason any self-respecting cow would climb to the top and spend five months on a mountain. It just made no sense to her.

So, though she was prevented from getting into the wheat fields, Beula could sometimes be found munching the mown grass on the airstrip or pulling apples off low hanging branches from the orchard in Bob and Anita’s front yard. This of course frustrated Bob to no end and he would run at her yelling and flailing his arms wildly only to have Beula saunter off with a smirk on her face as she lifted her tail and dropped brown piles on his neatly mown lawn. It was nearly impossible for the couple to host a yard BBQ since the cow learned that picnics meant corn on the cob and coleslaw salads. Much to the delight of the children, Beula would come trotting out from behind an outbuilding to join the festivities at the picnic tables.

Since Bob and Anita lived a fare distance from the Davenport airport, it was not uncommon for dad to land at the ranch airstrip for the night if the wheat spraying was not done and was to be finished the following morning. He would borrow one of Bob’s pickups and drive back to town for the night.

The aircraft which was used for this crop-dusting operation was a Boeing Stearman PT-17 which was used as a trainer for new airmen during WW2. In the training configuration, the student and instructor sat tandem, one behind the other. In the crop-dusting configuration, the chemical tank was in the front seat area and the pilot sat behind. The Stearman was a biplane with a Continental radial engine. The wings were wood with fabric covering while the fuselage had a tough, welded steel framework, also fabric covered. The fabric was sealed with a lacquer coating which resisted rain and chemicals.

The evening this incident occurred, Beula watched with curiosity as the big biplane landed on the airstrip, taxied up to the barn and parked. Dad climbed out of the cockpit, entered Bob’s pickup, and drove back to town.

Beula sauntered up to the silver painted aircraft and circled it. She could not for the life of her understand how a dog like Snoopy could fly something so large. It was no wonder the Red Barron was constantly shooting him down. Perhaps if she were given a chance, she could learn to fly too . . . but then, how do you hold the stick with hooves?

She gingerly lumbered to the tail section of the taildragger and pushed her nose into the fabric skin. The aircraft did nothing. It was perhaps friendly. She licked it to show that she was welcoming it to her farm. Her rough sandy tongue scratched over its surface. Mmmm, the flavor of lacquer; an unusual bouquet she had not experienced before. This was nothing like the salt blocks which Bob had left by the barn. She continued licking. Soon the fabric began to delaminate. She pulled at the fraying cloth with her front teeth.

“It tastes like, like chewy sugar cane,” she thought. “Thank you, Bob and Anita, this is delicious!”

The next morning at 5:00 am, dad rolled up to the ranch in Bob’s pickup. There, sleeping next to the Stearman was a very plump Beula. Plump because she had eaten the fabric off the tail of the airplane fuselage and both elevators. The shiny steel and wood ribs were exposed like a skeleton.

An hour later, my dad and Bob walked the perimeter of the grounded aircraft. Somehow, they needed to get the biplane back to the Davenport airport for repairs.

In 1965 a movie was released called, “The Flight of the Phoenix.” It had a large cast including Jimmy Stewart, George Kennedy, and Ernest Borgnine. The premise of the movie is that a crew of men flying across the Sahara in a Fairchild C-82 cargo plane gets caught in a sandstorm causing the plane to crash in the desert. With no outsiders knowing their location and running out of food and water, the crew members must find a way to survive. It was decided that they would redesign and rebuild the aircraft to fly it out of the desert. How they did it would be worth your watching.

Bob went to the barn where the hay was stored and removed a section of black tarp covering it. He also grabbed scissors and a large roll of tape. Back at the Stearman, the two men began piecing and taping black tarp to the ribs of the biplane. An hour later, the now black and silver airplane was ready to fly. Apparently, there was so much tape applied, none of the black tarp blew off on the flight back. The mechanics in Davenport reapplied the skin and the biplane was good as new.

Beula, on the other hand, found out that passing fabric was not as easy as eating fabric. It took a garden hose flooding water and Bob’s long arm to get things flowing properly again.

That fall Beula was sent away for the purpose she was raised. As a promotional gimmick Bob and Anita sold the meat under the label of “Stearman Steaks and Burger” with a graphic of a smiling Beula.

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