Man's Pipe Shoots Bullet Through Cow

1920

Valuable Dairy Animal Dies Peculiar Death.

Smoker Gets Cartridges Mixed in With Tobacco — Tragic Explosion Results.

LYNN, Mass. — The "Queen of the Dairy" is dead, and she met her death in a very peculiar manner.

Jackson Bugger, proprietor of a local dairy farm, keeps thirty cows. The Queen of the Dairy was known by her peculiar markings. Some called her the "calico" cow, but Mr. Bugger named her the Queen, because she was his best cow.

On a recent afternoon Mr. Bugger's herd was in the barnyard. He went there to drive the cows into the barn. He stopped at the barnyard pump, took his pipe from his hip pocket, filled it with loose tobacco from his coat pocket, lighted his pipe and started to drive the cows into the barn.

Queen of the Dairy stood several feet away from the other cows. Mr. Bugger walked toward her and when a few feet away there was a loud explosion and his pipe was blown into countless pieces. Smoke filled his eyes. He rubbed them, and when the fog cleared away Queen of the Dairy lay at his feet dead with a bullet through her head.

Mr. Bugger says he was out in a back lot after dinner shooting at crows with a 32-caliber rifle; that he carried the loose cartridges in his coat pocket with his tobacco and that he placed a cartridge in his pipe which "went off," struck the cow and killed her.

He supposed he had removed all the cartridges from his pocket.