WHEN Trish Matthews arrived home she couldn't moo-ve - FOR COWS!

Was TV's practical joker Jeremy Beadle about? Or was someone pulling the udder leg?

For covering her drive in Rogersfield, Langho, and causing havoc in her garden were 25 stray cows.

Trish was first alerted to the invasion when a neighbour phoned her at Blackburn College.

By the time she got home the cows had:

Eaten most of her newly landscaped garden.

Smashed the greenhouse.

Broken paving stones on the patio.

Made a quagmire of her lawns.

Left the drive peppered with cow pats.

Mrs Matthews, whose husband Patrick and three children were equally shocked, said: "When I was told the cows were in my garden I must admit I laughed.

"Then when I turned up at home and saw just what a mess they had made it was a big shock. I was waiting for Jeremy Beadle to jump out!"

The cows' owner Jack Wearden, of Shaw House Farm, Whalley, said: "They have just had their calves taken from them and they get a bit of wanderlust. They smashed out of their field farther up the road and must have walked about 200 metres along the main road to get here."

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