Born Free

In between meeting the demands of the ballet cartel, I came home for a little break.  My  plan was to sit down and read for the hour that my leaotard clad overlords had allotted me.

But we have cows.  So no such luck.

I had been home just long enough to get my shoes off when there was a knock at the door.  It was a nice neighbor girl who had come by to let me know that we had a cow out.  Now this is not a new thing.  A select few of our cows and steers can wriggle their way through the bars of the feeder.  So I pulled my shoes on and yelled for Sam and Amy to come help.  

Now this was  not our first rodeo so we got out there in good time and prepared for the usual scenario.  But what we found was new.  A few cows were out.  But one steer had taken "out" to a new level.  He was tearing through the neighbors field, kicking his feet and bucking into the air.  He was the perfect picture of an animal running free and wild.

But the closer you got, the more the whole "Born Free" picture started to unravel.  First I noticed that he was bawling.  Then I noticed that his tongue was completely out of his mouth.  And his eyes were so big that you could see the whites all the way around.  He wasn't running free, he was freaking out.

Now the problem with animals that are happily running free is that they like what they are doing and don't want to stop.  So that can be a challenge.  But it's even worse when the animal is just freaking out because cows are not the Einsteins of the food chain as it is and panick makes them dumber.  A lot dumber.

We spread out and tried to assume our basic roundup position.  I know some farmers use dogs but I am allergic to dogs.  But I am not allergic to kids so I have trained them to herd.  They are almost as good as cow herding dogs except the dogs can't talk.  Or whine.  Or lament the fact that they do every bit of work that has ever come up on the farm while everyone else try to out lazy each other.  So yeah, there are some pluses to dogs.  But anywhoo, I don't have any.

Amy, who is a cow herding ninja, started running around to come up into his shoulder and wheel him around.  But thefield was big and she's pretty little so as soon as he saw her move, he started trying to spin around.  Pirouette, I think the ballet cartel calls it.  Then he took off across the field with Sam and Amy running out trying to circle around and push him back.  We got almost to the road and then he turned around and wheeled back. 

 This time, he had to come back between the kids so he tried to zigzag, but zigzagging requires planning and some thinking so he just kept moving as he slid a couple feet on his knee and then fell over.  Then he took off again.  He was semi majestic, running in the twiglight like Seabiscuit having a seziure.  

I had my cousin teach me how to heard cows a while ago.  She knows how to do every thing farmery, plus she's about the coolest person you could ever hang out with.  So armed with this nugget of knowledge and a few months experience I was helping the kids out by screaming things like "add pressure"  and release pressure" and "watch his flight zone".  It is amazing how little people appreciate constructive criticism in times of crisis.  It's almost like the kids weren't listening to me at all.

Finally, I dug around in my pocket, found a nice .22 shell and lobbed it at him, really hard.  Now I know that bullets are more effective when thrown by guns.  But one thing you really learn from farming is to make do with what you have.  Since I hit him hard on the side, he wheeled around and started running again.  But this time his direction took him right through the gate I had opened for him.

Finding himself surrounded by his own bovine posse, he came to a screeching halt.  He stood, wide eyed as if he was trying to figure out how he had come to be home again.  And then he came over to the fence where I was trying to hook the gate.  He began by sniffing my jacket and then he began licking my jacket.  Then he started biting my jacket and pulling my arm.  For his trouble he just nice shove in the side.  Undaunted he returned and began licking my habd.  I don't know if it was affection or retribution but he stood there licking hy ice cold hand with her asphalt rough tongue, until having said whatever it was he came to say, he melted back into the black and white  masses in the darkening barn.

I sent the kids in and checked the fences,  then I turned and walked back to the house across the frozen ground.  I could hear soft bellows from the barn as he recounted his tale.  I stood on my porch a minute and listened, to his adventure and mine and laughed.