Where's the Beef?

Or should I say, "Where's the meat?"

After returning from my latest trip to Phoenix, I read the following news report in my e-mail, one of several headlines I get fed from Baltimore's WBAL TV:

CATONSVILLE, Md. -- Police said an elderly woman was trampled by a bull on Inwood Avenue in Catonsville on Saturday. The bull was blocking the road and the woman got out of her car to try to push the bull out of the way, police said. They said that's when the bull trampled her. Authorities said the unidentified woman's injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.

That's it. Sad story... But sadder is the fact that the meat of this story is not explained or even mentioned... Where did this bull come from?! Are there still farms in Catonsville? Is it someone's pet? Obviously, the writer assumes that no one will question the fact that a bull just happened to appear in the middle of a road in a suburb of a major metropolitan area? It was, afterall, some urban-sounding street called Inwood Avenue, not some a rural route. (I almost thought I was back in Phoenix, where a wandering bull would be at home with wild coyotes, people carrying firearms into bars -- legally, coyboy hats and mountains in the distance... Can't you hear it? "Hey, Vern? D'ya hear Mrs. Smith got herself run over by a durn bull? Doc's tending to her now.")

But I think the question of what part of Catonsville and why was the bull there should have been in the mind of the writer and editor, and it should have steered at least a portion of this story. Now, I know this was only a TV headline service, delivered online. However, some basic and vital info is missing here, and it should not force me to solely read the Sun or other print-based Web sites.... I like WBAL's Weather Center, and I hate to subscribe to too many of these things.

Or maybe I'm just in a bullcrappy kind of mood.