Free-range cows

SOMETHING with hoofs moves behind an oak. A twig snaps and dry grass rustles as a horned animal breaks into the clearing. Could it be one of the fugitive cattle of Cheeseboro Canyon, the elusive bovines that park rangers say have eluded capture for more than five years?

Shrubs and branches around the oak tree shudder, but instead of a cow, a four-point buck bounds away.

The search for the wayward cows continues. Long before Reggie the alligator made headlines by evading trappers at Lake Machado near Harbor City the feral cattle of Cheeseboro and Palo Camado canyons in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area stayed one hoof ahead of authorities. Though rarely seen, rangers insist the heifers are holed up in oaks and chaparral in the canyons and rolling hills near Simi Valley.

One warm morning, I load my backpack with Gatorade and ride a mountain bike deep into the canyons to find these bewildering beasts. How hard could it be? They’re not cheetahs or gazelles, they have no camouflage and they are as conspicuous as a parade float and as swift as rush-hour traffic. By definition, a bovine is ox-like, slow, dull, stupid.

But by day’s end, I feel slow, dull and stupid. I never saw a single cow. I’m not alone. The stealthy cattle have become experts at outwitting and outmaneuvering park officials and ranchers.

Five years ago, 15 head of livestock escaped from a pen in Ahmanson Ranch and disappeared into the national park. A break in the search came in September when a wildfire stripped away vegetation and forced the cows into the open. A rancher who owns the cows baited a pen with corn, hay and other cow chow and snared six hungry animals.

Nine renegade cattle remain -- the smartest ones left in the herd -- and continue to evade their captors.

How can livestock -- 1,000 pounds of hoofed sirloin -- elude capture for five years in a popular park adjacent to a busy freeway?

Bill Plummer, an animal science professor at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, says farm animals unleash their wild instincts after an escape.

For example, pigs that sneaked into Mt. Tamalpais State Park in Marin County several years ago turned into cagey feral swine that continue to evade traps and hunters.

The cattle of Cheeseboro and Palo Camado canyons probably adopted a similar born-to-be-wild mind-set, Plummer says. By now, he says, the cattle see humans not as providers and protectors but as another predator to avoid.

“When they become feral, they don’t make a distinction between what is trying to eat them and what just wants to catch them,” he says.

To adapt to their surroundings, he says the animals have become thinner and wirier. (Maybe that’s where low-fat milk comes from.)

“These cows won’t look like the cows you normally see,” Plummer says.

As I set off on my cattle quest, I ask some visitors, regulars to these mountains, if they’ve seen any cows. That’s when I get “the look.” It’s the same look you might receive if you told friends your brain was picking up radio transmissions from the Andromeda galaxy.

“Never, never,” says Kerri Hopkins, who has been riding horses in the canyon for 13 years. She and a riding partner say they haven’t even seen a cow pie.

I pedal up Modelo Trail, a dusty, single-track through grasslands that survived the wildfire -- prime cow pasture. I listen for a moooooo. Nothing.

As I crest a hill, I spot movement in a shrubby ravine. A Holstein wading through a creek? Nope, just the play of light on the water. I pedal on.

Park ranger Jim Richardson is one of the few eyewitnesses to these sly cattle. A day after the Topanga Fire started Sept. 28, he saw 15 cattle in the hills north of the park entrance.

A few days later, he came across two cows in the southern end of the canyon, near a collection of ramshackle buildings and cattle pens known as Morrison Ranch.

“I came close to them, and they just took off running like a deer might if you were to get too close ... skittish,” he says.

Richardson has been helping to capture them. He suspects the heifers stay close to the creeks in canyon bottoms, but they are so elusive he is asking the state for a helicopter to aid in the search.

Also, officials are unsure if the herd may begin to multiply. Richardson says he is not sure if the escaped cattle include steers and cows. It is also possible, he says, that the fugitives are breeding with cattle from nearby ranches. So far, no one has reported seeing any calves.

Back at the park, I peddle for more than an hour. Drenched with sweat and out of Gatorade, I complete a six-mile loop around the park’s greenest pastures. I spot two deer, a brazen coyote and half a dozen hawks, but no cows.

Heading back, I wonder: Why catch them? These are special animals: cunning, elusive, free-range cattle. Why not let them roam free, drawing thousands of curious park visitors for the chance to glimpse these beasts? Think of the merchandise: T-shirts, bumper stickers and bobble-head cows.

I pitch my idea to Richardson, but he insists the livestock must be removed. He says the cattle trample riparian habitat. The National Park Service is even considering cowboys to round them up.

And then what? Once returned to a pen, Plummer says the cattle will revert to slow, dull domesticated farm animals. A Thorazine-like stupor will take over.

“Once they realize they are fat and happy, they lose the impetus to leave,” he says. But until then, Cheeseboro and Palo Camado canyons remain home of the free and land of the bovine.

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Hugo Martin can be reached at hugo.martin@latimes.com.