Local cow top suspect in Montana Hall heist

DISCLAIMER: This is a satirical piece. It does not necessarily represent the views of the Exponent or its writers and should not be construed as truth.

On the evening of Monday, March 25, the second Montana Hall bell tower (yes, the whole f*cking tower) was taken by the original perpetrator’s descendant.

Montana Hall’s original bell tower was replaced in 1926 after being lost to a cow who climbed to the top and refused to get down. However, some believe the event never transpired. Political science student Haters Will said, “It’s fake,” when asked about the events of 1926.

On Monday evening, MSU President Wadder Cruzadder reported hearing “strange noises” above her office.

“I called the authorities to investigate, but they refused. My security officers are trained to walk up stairs but not down them, and they didn’t want to risk having to remove the bell tower to get them out,” she said.

Montana Hall security cameras showed a large figure in a trenchcoat and sunglasses entering the building minutes before Cruzadder’s report. The footage showed the same figure coming back down the stairs with a bell tower-shaped lump under its coat just hours later.

Upon closer examination of the footage, resident animal science students determined that the figure was a cow.

“It’s a common mistake, but when we zoomed in real close I noticed four cleft hooves where the feet should have been. Seeing that, I realized it probably wasn’t a horse or an MSU student,” said agricultural education student Brenda Bee.

Bee’s testimony was backed by one local farmer, Lyle, who operates his kiwi farm on top of the Whole Foods on Main Street. “Yep, that’s definitely a cow,” he said.

On Tuesday, March 26, the bell tower was confirmed missing by MSU PD.

The nameless bellringer was sent upstairs for their morning shift but came down in silence. He then promptly quit his job and left campus for good, according to Cruzadder. 

“I’m just trying to change my family culture,” the bellringer said in a later interview. “My great, great grandfather was the first one to lose the belltower and I’m not going to have one of my kids lose a third.”

Aberdeen Angus hair samples were found at the scene of the crime. DNA testing showed that the thief was a blood descendant of the 1926 perpetrator.

“At first I thought it could’ve been a thing cows have against bells, but then I remembered we don’t use real bells up there anymore,” Cruzadder said.

To pursue the Aberdeen, MSU officials proposed enlisting Cattle Detective Tom Horn at an emergency council meeting according to professional eavesdropper Samwise Gamgee. They quickly discovered that Horn is both dead and a serial murderer from page five of the Steamboat Pilot’s 1930, Dec. 19 edition, and decided it was best to leave him out of the case.

The council decided to “keep it on the low down, and focus our efforts on more important things like finding a good spot for another privately run hotel on campus,” Gamgee said, quoting VP of Research and Economic Development Margaret J. Hill.

The investigation is ongoing and the case is set to go cold within the next three years if all goes well, according to MSU PD’s weekly blog post.