The Buzz: Cpl. Veronika, you’re being sent to defend Greenland
Published 1:30 am Saturday, January 24, 2026
By Jon Bauer / Herald Opinion Editor
Our license with the American Association of Snark and Satire Writers, Dave Barry Chapter, requires that we start here: Animal behavioral scientists are celebrating a study that explores the newly discovered ability of a 13-year-old cow in Austria that has demonstrated an ability to use tools.
Veronika, a Swiss brown cow kept as a “companion animal” by an organic farmer, has demonstrated a range of abilities in using a tool, specifically employing different ends of a wooden broom — held in her mouth — to scratch different areas of her body. Cattle, with the exception shown in Far Side cartoons, have never been known to use a tool in this manner.
Simply brushing up against a fence post or a stationary U.S. Department of Agricultural field agent doesn’t count, apparently.
‘We will fight for bovine freedom, and hold our large heads high’: Veronika’s capabilities “should give us some pause and perhaps also motivate us to look at livestock animals differently,” said Dr. Alice Auersperg, a cognitive biologist at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna and author of the study, titled — and we are not making this up because it is not in italics — “Flexible use of a multi-purpose tool by a cow.”
From the study’s text: “We recorded 76 instances of self-directed tool use over seven sessions of 10 trials. Veronika manipulated the tool with her mouth, using the tongue to lift and position it before securing it laterally in the diastema (gap) between the incisors and molars, creating a stable grip that allowed precise control of the distal end. As predicted, she applied the tool exclusively to regions on the rear half of her body (the rump, loin, thurl, udder and navel flap), areas difficult to reach otherwise.”
Further research — to look at livestock much differently — will expand on potential practical uses by Veronika of a 14-in-1 Leatherman multi-tool, a DeWalt random orbital sander, a Ninja Nutri-Blender and — ominously — a Winchester Waterfowl Hunter pump-action shotgun.
In other potentially disturbing yet somehow amusing news this week:
Not the only one who’s no longer contented: President Trump and Cabinet officials were in Europe this week to confront European leaders upset about the U.S. president’s insistence that Denmark either agree to sell the semi-autonomous island of Greenland to the U.S. or face stiff tariffs or even a military takeover. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, dismissively answered reporters questions about European leaders’ objections: “I imagine they will form the dreaded European working group,” Bessent said, calling it their “most forceful weapon.”
No, Mr. Bessent, we believe that their “most forceful weapon” now is a 13-year-old Swiss brown cow from Austria who currently is taking target practice with a pump-action shotgun she’s holding firmly in the diastema between her incisors and molars.
It comes with a gold-plated pacifier: President Trump, in an earlier exchange with Norway’s prime minister, said that it was a snub by the Nobel Committee — in not awarding him a Nobel Peace Prize — that caused him to reconsider the possible use of military force to take Greenland. “Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America … The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland,” he wrote the Norwegian leader.
Norway, embarrassed by the oversight immediately announced that it was presenting President Donald J. Trump with its Nobel Pique Prize, celebrating outstanding lifetime achievement in unwarranted irritation, bitter resentment and wounded pride.
What if he threw in a season pass to the Trump-Kennedy Center? France, among other nations, appears lukewarm toward the Donald Trump-led “Board of Peace” that has been created to oversee the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip but could also address other global issues and is being seen by some as a rival to the United Nations. A permanent spot on the board will cost countries $1 billion. Ten nations have agreed, but France and others have balked. When told of French President Emmanuel Macron’s hesitation, Trump threatened: “I’ll put a 200 percent tariff on his wines and Champagnes, and he’ll join, but he doesn’t have to join.”
If it’s the $1 billion dues payment that is bothering them, perhaps Macron and others don’t understand that membership on the Board of Peace comes with a complimentary $TRUMP meme coin, a barrel of vintage Venezuelan heavy crude and a two-night stay at Trump Greenland’s Nuuk-a-Largo resort.
You can stand down, Cpl. Veronika: By Wednesday afternoon, even after Trump repeated his threats to take over Greenland during his address at the Davos forum, a framework for an agreement between Denmark, NATO and the United States appeared to have resolved the struggle over the semi-autonomous Arctic island, with the U.S. given “sovereignty” over small pockets of Greenland to build and operate U.S. military bases. Trump said he had called off his tariff threats against European nations but was evasive in response to reporters’ questions about whether he still intended to “own” all of Greenland.
It wasn’t a complete bust for the president. On his way out of Davos, he picked up a T-shirt at the airport that read: “I threatened world peace and economic stability and all I got was some lousy pockets of Greenland.”
Email Jon Bauer at jon.bauer@heraldnet.com.
