Distinguished distinguishing…
A cow is not a cow when it is a ‘beef creature’.
Sherwood v. Walker, 66 Mich. 568, 577-578 (1887).
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It is truly sad that I think about this whole thing. Think about it enough to look it up. Sadder still is the fact that I’m enamoured with the fact that the archaic plural of cow is kine or kyne.
But I digress, I looked up that bastion of information, wikipedia( some people use another word that begins with b to describe wikipedia but let’s not go there) and it mentioned and I quote
“In some areas of the American South (particularly the Appalachian region) the local inhabitants call an individual animal a “beef critter”. This was common until the 1960s and has faded from usage in all but a few areas and even then it is used mostly among the aged inhabitants.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle
I can’t see a judge using the word ‘critter’ in an opinion so I can see how a nice Mid-West judge in Michigan would use the word creature.
I guess now you know.