"Earlier this year, the dazed" joke

Earlier this year, the dazed crew of a Japanese Trawler was plucked out
of the Sea of Japan clinging to the wreckage of their sunken ship.
Their rescue, however, was followed by immediate imprisonment once
authorities questioned the sailors on their ship's loss. To a man they
claimed that a cow, falling out of a clear blue sky, had struck the
trawler amidships, shattering it's hull and sinking the vessel within
minutes.
They remained in prison for several weeks, until the Russian Air Force
reluctantly informed Japanese authorities that the crew of one of its
cargo planes had apparently stolen a cow wandering at the edge of a
Siberian airfield, forced the cow into the plane's hold and hastily taken
off for home.
Unprepared for live cargo, the Russian crew was ill-equipped to manage a
now rampaging cow within its hold. To save the aircraft and themselves,
they shoved the animal out of the cargo hold as they crossed the Sea of
Japan at an altitude of 30,000 feet.