Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
Bushy bovine an animal attraction
Marlborough woman Tamara Neame couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw the creature take shape.
‘‘Oh my gosh, that’s a cow in a tree.’’
Not a real climbing cow, but two strangely cropped trees that created an optical illusion of a bushy bovine.
Neame was driving down Dillons Point Rd, on a break from university, when she first saw the trees.
‘‘I thought, hey, that looks like a cow,’’ Neame said.
She had shown the optical illusion to her colleagues who agreed about the uncanny resemblance.
People can often see things, like faces or patterns, in otherwise ordinary objects, like shapes in clouds. This phenomenon is called pareidolia.
Marlborough’s cow-tree joins the ranks of other famous examples of pareidolia such as the man on Mars, Jesus Christ’s face in a ‘miracle’ brain scan and the Virgin Mary on a pebble.
A Marlborough District Council spokesperson said people see what they want to see, but the sculpture wasn’t intentional.
Marlborough Tree Care arborist Mike English said the reason the tree had a flat top was to keep it from encroaching on the above power lines.
He also agreed the tree resembled a cow, and while he hadn’t seen a tree that looked like something else in his professional career, they came up online often.
‘‘Usually, if you come across peculiar shapes it’s just the way it’s been pruned in the past,’’ English said.
‘‘I’ve done topiary before. Some customers ask for small trees to be what we call lollipops,’’ he said.
‘‘No-one’s asked me to shape one into a cow or a chicken yet.’’
He said the trees had been topped, which wasn’t a particularly good practice in tree pruning.
‘‘Functionally, around power lines, you have to make compromises. You don’t have many options,’’ English said.
So while you’re out looking at the Christmas lights, perhaps swing past Dillons Point Rd and check out Blenheim’s tree-cow.
‘‘I’m sure other people have seen it,’’ Neame said. ‘‘If they haven’t, they should.’’