I assumed this was a hoax of some kind, but if it is it has fooled all the major news outlets.

Not that that's especially difficult these days.

Reports started to come in on Wednesday that a cow had stolen 26 gallons of milk from a Walmart in northern Virginia and then tried to give it away to shoppers in the parking lot. The cow's use of a cart to get the milk outside suggested that this was in fact a man in a cow suit, which police later confirmed.

A Stafford County Sheriff's spokesman said that according to witnesses the cow-man, or man-cow as the case may be, had entered the store on all fours, filled up a cart with milk jugs, and then nudged the full cart outside (again on all fours), all apparently without being challenged. After trying (unsuccessfully) to dispose of the goods, he then fled. Although I guess "fled" is not the right word, since according to the spokesman he "was last seen skipping down the sidewalk."

A deputy arrived shortly thereafter, and while he was investigating that caper he got a call about a disturbance at a nearby McDonald's. Nothing much was happening when he arrived, but his attention was somehow drawn to a particular car. "After some questioning," one report says, "deputies determined the man was the suspect in the earlier Walmart heist." Their careful interrogation, plus the cow suit next to him on the back seat, seems to have cracked the case. Walmart employees identified the man, or more likely the suit.

The suit's occupant turned out to be an 18-year-old local man, who was charged with milklifting. "I suspect it was a prank that went too far," said the spokesman. "It would have been funny," he continued, "if he hadn't taken the milk." He didn't explain how that would have been funny.