It’s been a rough day. It was supposed to be a run of the mill Thursday. I had some meetings on the calendar and was scheduled to teach some sales classes at work, but nothing dramatic.
The day started quite peacefully. Lucy the Mastiff had no accidents during the night and was well behaved all morning. I had my coffee and quiet time, then went upstairs to get ready for work.
While I was showering, Brittan got up, put on her farm clothes and prepared to face the day. As I got dressed, she would head downstairs and infuse her soul with caffeine. Before she stepped into the hallway, my cell phone rang. My phone NEVER rings. Especially not in the mornings.
The call was from a lady from Church who was taking care of our youth pastor’s dogs; letting them out to potty. The youth pastor lives next to our farm. The lady, who shall remain nameless to protect her identity from being besieged by pet sitter requests said, “Sam, one of your cows is out.”
Please allow me to point out that “one of your cows is out” is not an expression I’d hoped to hear this morning. It is not a hopeful, amusing, entertaining or casual announcement. It’s an “Oh, Crap” moment.
Brittan was already on her way to the truck before I could thank the caller and hang up. I finished buttoning my freshly ironed white shirt, made sure it was tucked properly into my dress trousers, slipped on my shoes, jumped in the car and chased Brittan down the road.
Please keep in mind that our farm is surrounded on three sides by a subdivision and our Church Property. The front side is a major road with thousands of cars blasting by in the mornings. It is rush hour and a pregnant cow is loose in the neighborhood. As long as she stays near the fence where the other cows, including her calf, are peacefully grazing, all will be well. If she strays to the highway, bad, horrible things will happen.
I pulled up beside the wandering cow and parked the car. The escapee is Nadia, mother to our heifer, Butter and to our bull calf, Sir Loin. Nadia is fairly easy going, but doesn’t like us touching her. She has jumped fences before. Brittan had arrived far enough ahead of me that she was putting a bucket of sweet feed in front of Nadia’s face to distract the bolting bovine while we got a rope on her.
Brittan is one of the best I’ve ever seen at calming an animal and getting them to allow themselves to be roped, caged, corralled or captured. She has amazing patience with the animals.
After she got a rope on Nadia, I took it from her, held the rope fairly close to the cow’s neck and led her away. B walked in front with the bucket of junk food just out of Nadia’s reach.
Now we faced our first and biggest problem, how to get Nadia back into the field. She sure as heck wasn’t going to jump back in and there are no gates on the subdivision side of the pastures. Our only option seemed to be to walk Nadia around the corner, along the shoulder of the road against rush hour traffic, up the driveway and through a gate. This was not going to be easy.
The journey started off easy enough. Nadia was cooperative and the smell of sweet feed was intoxicating to her. As soon as we rounded the corner though, the fast cars and traffic noise spooked her and she lurched. For a moment I was able to stay in control. I stayed on the road side and kept pushing her to the inside.
Between the shoulder of the road and the fence is a boxwood hedge and a fairly dense stand of 2 to 4 inch diameter pine trees. Fear of the traffic scared Nadia so bad that she jumped into the boxwood hedge and dragged me through it lengthways. It is a thick hedge and she eventually stopped to rest. I caught my breath then she turned around to race through the trees back to where we started. I held on for a moment, being bounced off pine trunks, but eventually had to let go. My left shoulder and left thumb had been jammed pretty severely by collisions with evergreens and my glasses lay twisted about three feet away from where my momentum ended.
Fortunately, Nadia ran into the Youth Pastor’s back yard where Brittan was able to grab the rope and tie her to a large wood framed swing set. About the same time, a Good Samaritan stopped to ask if we needed some help. We gladly accepted her offer.
I get a little fuzzy after that, because the shock, trauma and oxygen deprivation had me in a state of delirium. I remember Brittan asking me what we were going to do. I said, “we have to cut the fence and drive her in through the hole, then put the cows in another pasture.”
By that time I realized that Nadia would not leave her calf, so the fence cutting should work.
I stayed with Nadia, while Brittan went to cut the fence. Our anonymous helper stood by the fence to calm the other cows who were by now in quite a state.
Even with a halter and second rope, Nadia proved too strong for the both of us, but she only wanted to be near her calf, so B walked behind her down the fence line and I walked beside, but about 10 feet away in case she decided to turn towards the road again.
This time, there were no incidents. The stressed out cow walked straight through the hole in the fence and reunited with her son. Three of the 4 cows followed Brittan to the new pasture as if nothing had ever happened. I had to go back and encourage the fourth one to move along and join the migration.
Once the cattle were in the other field we were able to do a damage assessment. Apart from some cow pats and spilled feed in the Youth Pastor’s yard, the only other property damage was the cut fence, but that is fairly easily repaired. No, most of the wreckage appears to be to my carcass. I am fairly bruised from head to toe. My clothes were ruined, but that’s no big deal. I will heal, but not for a few days.
I forgot to mention that somewhere along the way, as B was climbing over the fence, one of her feet got stuck for a second and she went head first over the fence. She, being younger and more nimble than her man, went straight into her best Jackie Chan impersonation and executed a perfect tuck and roll. She’s going to be sore, but nothing broken or strained. Whew.
As a sequel, after Brittan got home, she went out to work the bee hives to prepare them for removing honey. She got stung twice; once on the nose and once on the temple. I convinced her to take some Benadryl. She sent me an email saying she took two and was totally drunk. She said she would take a nap and see me tomorrow.
So, how was YOUR day?