A farmer’s grandson was riding his bicycle across their field when he heard a cow. At first he could not see any cow. All the cows were on the other side of the field. But he heard a cow very near.
He looked around and then he saw her. The cow was stuck between two trunks of a tree. There were two trees growing very close to each other and after many years these two trees became one tree. But there was a hole between their two trunks. The poor cow put her head through that hole and now she couldn’t pull it out. She was stuck.
The boy jumped on his bicycle and rode to the farmhouse to tell everyone what happened. At first they didn’t want to believe him. They all laughed at the story, but then they followed the boy and really, there was one of their cows stuck in the tree.
The firefighters and men from the village came to look at the cow and help to set her free. They brought their saws and axes too.
First they tried to pull her head back through the hole between the trunks, but they were not successful. And so they decided to cut down the tree.
They were thinking how to do it because they didn’t want to hurt the cow. Suddenly, they heard a loud shot and then the cow’s body fell on the ground. First they got scared, but when they went around to that side of the tree, where the cow had her head, they saw the old farmer with a shotgun in his hand. He shot the cow in the head. The cow was dead.
‘Why did you shoot the cow?’ they asked him. ‘We could save her.’
He looked at them and said: ‘This tree is three times more expensive than the cow.’ Then he turned around and started walking with the shotgun in his hand towards the farmhouse.
That evening they roasted the cow. Everyone from the village came to the feast. They ate and drank and said that the old farmer was a very wise man.
stuck /stʌk/ – zaseknutý
set her free – oslobodiť
shotgun /ˈʃɒtɡʌn/ – brokovnica
feast /fiːst/ – hostina
Sparrow's English Reader 