[Disclaimer: First let me say that cow tipping is not a nice thing to do. It’s pretty much impossible to tip a cow. They are very squarely built.]
In the virtual world of the world wide web, a page exists where you can tip over a tiny little cow gif.
Go to: angelfire.com/oh/cow123/tip.html and click on the cow. Yup, that’s right, I’m asking you to go to an angelfire.com webpage.
Once you click on the cow, you’ll be brought to a new page at: angelfire.com/oh/cow123/tip2.html
You’ll see the cow tip over. It’s a simple animated gif. The counter will increase by one. My tipping made the counter go up to #2,162. Ahh, the glories of early 2000s still alive today.
History of the cow tipping animated gif
Amazing that this page has been up for at least 18 years, and this cow has been tipped over only 2,162 times. Perhaps archive.org can give us the history of the counter tally.
Archive.org’s earliest capture for this page is January 17, 2002. The page appears to be almost identical to what we see today. So encouraging to see simply internet delights like this remain alive. Unfortunately, the counter in this captured archive doesn’t display the tally. The counter has a broken image icon. Ah well, some things don’t always preserve so well over time.
Archive.org does have more captures of this page.
A total of six archives have been saved over 18 years
- January 17, 2002: counter shows broken image icon
- October 6, 2002: counter says “counter error”
- February 20, 2009: 21,002 tips
- January 19, 2015: 317 tips
- July 28, 2019: 212 tips
- October 27, 2020: 2,162 tips (this archive is done by me)
Holy cow! The 2009 tally of 21,002 tips. Now, this is what I’m expecting. However, six years later, the tally is down to 317 tips. Perhaps the counter was reset at some point? The counter appears to go backwards over time. That’s a bunch of BULL.
Maybe Google might have some insight into this. Does this cow tipping image appear elsewhere online?
Huh. A Google search for “Cow Tip Counter”, says there are zero results!
GOOGLE! THIS IS AN UDDER PROBLEM. YOU ARE MISSING THIS PAGE!!!
Breakdown of the cow tipping animated gif
Since I’m not finding any additional information about this animated gif online, let’s look at the gif itself. The animated gif is only five frames. Let’s break the animation apart, and show each frame at high resolution.
Let’s get this counter up nice and high. Have yourself HERD and MILK this counter!