Tons Of Skittles Found On An Icy Road, And That’s Not Even The Weirdest Part Of This Story

Hundreds of thousands of Skittles were spilled on a road in Wisconsin

We learned something new about cows today. Yesterday, we didn’t learn anything new about cows, and that was unfortunate. But today? We’ve got a solid +1 in the Cow Knowledge column.

On Tuesday night, a large box of Skittles fell apart in the back of a flatbed pickup truck and onto County Highway S (now S for Skittle) in Dodge County, Wisconsin. Hundreds of thousands of red Skittles covered the road. “There’s no little ‘S’ on them, but you can definitely smell, it’s a distinct Skittles smell,” Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt said.

At first, police weren’t sure who was responsible for the spill because apparently when you spill half a million Skittles on the road you don’t stick around to see what happens next. Eventually, they found out that the person responsible was hauling the Skittles to a farm where they were to be fed to cattle. Yes, they feed Skittles to cattle. Did you know about this? Because we didn’t know about this.

Turns out it’s not uncommon for candy makers like Skittles to take candies rejected for packaging due to their poor grades and disjointed application essays and ship them off to be used as cow feed. It’s true — B-Team candy and unsold pastries serve as good, inexpensive sources of carbohydrates for cows, and, as John Waller, an animal studies professor at the University of Tennessee said in an article in Live Science, “It keeps fat material from going out in the landfill, and it’s a good way to get nutrients in these cattle. The alternative would be to put [the candy] in a landfill somewhere.”

They’re recycling, y’all. As far as we’re concerned, this is a victimless crime: cows get to eat Skittles; rejected Skittles get to serve a purpose in their short, defective lives; and we, the American people, are spared the indignity of having to eat low-quality Skittles. That’s what they call a win win win.

As you can imagine, however, there are some people out there who are not happy about this situation. And they made their feelings known on the Dodge County Sheriff’s Facebook page. These three comments sum up the majority of them:

“Absoulety [sic] gross! Why are we ok with feeding cows Skittles to fatten them up. Know where your meat comes from people. I hope you’re all learned [sic] something from this.”

“if anything would make quit eating beef, it’d be knowing that they are eating skittles or twinkies or anything artificial really, smh”

“What about all the red Dye??”

We asked local cow Buttercup if she had any thoughts on these questions she’d be willing to share. She stopped eating a delicious mixture of sawdust and chicken shit and took a moment to ponder them. “Well,” she said, pausing to take a sip of her own urine, “scientists say that as long as we’re getting a well-rounded diet, then where our carbs come from doesn’t make much of a difference. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to head out the field and chew regurgitated food for the next 8 hours.”

Buttercup has a point. Perhaps stressing out about cows eating Skittles isn’t the best use of our time.