Hint: Your Classic Auster

It seemed like the perfectly normal thing to do. The pilot of a 1948 Auster J1-N landed in a cow field near Hereford, England, over the weekend for a meal at a local pub. But it was the plane that ended up on the menu.

The London Telegraph reports Mike Jones and his flying companions returned to the pasture from dinner to find that the herd of cattle which occupied the farmer's field in which they landed had eaten a huge hole in the fabric covering the J1-N (file photo of type, above).

"We usually land in farmers' fields," said Jones, 66, in an interview with the Telegraph, "but this is the first time something like this has happened. When the farmer found out he put up barbed wire to protect the plane from further damage, but the cows broke it down to eat some more. It might have been the white colour that attracted them. The wings are covered with chemicals, so maybe all these cows were on a high."

The newspaper reports Jones and his two friends, Lisa Kingscot and Tony Cooper, had to dismantle the Auster and put it on a trailer to get it home.

There's no word on the cows' condition.

(Thanks to Mark Horrell of www.markhorell.com for the bullocks photograph)

FMI: www.rabdf.co.uk