Aliens took my cow

This morning when I went outside I found Beulah standing in the middle pasture by the gate to the north pasture.

What?! 

I let Beulah back into the north pasture where the two large hay bales are located.  Before I could chew Beulah out she gave me this 'what took you so long' attitude.''

She must have broken through the fence for some reason. Why?!  Obviously it is not because the grass is greener on the other side of the fence!

This reminds me of a recent documentary I had watched.  Encounters at the End of the World.  In this documentary they show a penguin who goes 'insane' and instead of following the other penguins to the ocean, turns and walks towards the middle of Antarctic and certain death.  Maybe Beulah temporarily went insane and decided to head into the middle pasture.

I walked along the fence to find where she broke through the fence.  Should be easy to do as the snow had few tracks in it as the cattle spend most of their time around the hay bales or in the corral.

I found only one spot where tracks came to the fence.  It was under a large tree along a part of the fence I had rebuilt taller and into five strands a few years ago.  Nothing was broken.  While there were tracks on the other side of the fence no signs Beulah had somehow jumped over the fence.  It makes no sense to jump a taller fence under tree branches when down the fence line the fence is shorter with only three strands.

I crossed the fence and followed the tracks through the snow.  I followed them where they went along the fence and along the river.  I didn't follow where they went into the middle of the pasture.

The tracks were fresh except for a second set of tracks.  Those tracks were partially filled in by drifting snow.  They were cattle tracks and not deer tracks.  It is hard to tell how old they were.  In the morning the temperature was above freezing and snow no longer drifted. All the cattle were in the corral yesterday until 5 pm when I let them out to feed on the two new bales of hay I had placed in the north pasture.  The drifted tracks could have been a few hours old.

Still no indication of how Beulah crossed the fence.  While the cattle have not used the river to cross between the north and middle pastures, and it would be very difficult to do so based on the terrain and fencing along the river in most of the north pasture, I have found with cattle nothing is impossible.

The river is partially iced over along its sides and where the main flow does not go.  So I would see tracks coming from the river.  Nope.  Didn't see any.

I walked along the fence again.  Nope.  No signs how Beulah crossed.

I gave up.  I spent over an hour looking for how Beulah crossed the fence and I had other things to do.

Apparently aliens came and abducted Beulah for tests and probes.  When they returned Beulah the aliens put her in the wrong pasture.