Stray Cows

We have no neighbors across the street in front of us, just forest. Behind us, to the West and beside us, to the North, there are houses. Each are about 100 yards away. There's a house with pastures of cattle and horses about a quarter mile South of us. We're in the country but in a neighborhood too. Ms Donna likes it that way so that she can yell at the neighbors if we have any problems.

There's open range a couple of miles North of us so we have stray cows now and then. No big deal and pretty cool really.

Last weekend a very large cow wandered into our little arena. Oh neat, stray cow. We were sitting on the back porch enjoying the evening coolness (well it was Oklahoma coolness anyway - only in the ninetys). That cow wandered about and, as usual, the dogs went wild barking at it. We have one dog (Black Dog) who is a flying Lab. No fence can keep him in. He's the only one of our mutts that can escape at will. He wanders around the perimeter of our yard protecting it from squirrels and coons and possums. And from Ted and Judge, the neighbor's cow-dogs.

Black Dog was irritating the cow and our other doglings were yipping at it when it lowered its head and scraped its front legs into the ground with an unmistakeable charging posture. Oh my gawd, that's not a cow, it's a steer. Steers are pretty docile for the most part, since they've had all their Mr. Cowliness chopped off, but when you are a smaller animal giving them crap, they can be pretty mean. Our behind-the-house-neighbors (Alan and Sharon) were leaving their house in a truck. They drove slowly up to the cow and made it move. It stopped and pooped right there on the road. Since I have a garden I yelled "Dibs" right away so that Alan wouldn't get any ideas on that pile of crap. While they passed us Sharon yelled "He's all yours now". Great.

The 'cow' started charging our picket fence. The little dogs who were protected by the fence got really yippy then and told him about it. Black Dog kept his distance. He isn't a dumb animal.

I got a shovel and banged on the fence and chased the steer away for a minute. But he was riled now and trotting around down the hill behind our house. He pretty much tore up my nieghbor Alan's garden and butted the hay bales stacked there. He had no horns, just bumps, but his head is big enough that it caused lots of destruction.

Ms Donna called the Neffs, who live to the South of us and have livestock. "Do you know what to do about a mad cow?"

Steve Neff was sick in bed. Janet came over. She realized it was their steer. His name is Charbroiler. She calls him Blacky. She brought the feed truck and made feed-truck noises so that Charbroiler would think it's feeding time and maybe follow her back home.

He didn't.
He was in a playful mood. And he played. He ran all around the South pasture of my house and ran around (not through, thank goodness) my garden. And around the chicken coop, checking them out. And he charged at the doglings who were making wild and irritating noises from the relative safety of the fence.

I drove out there in my cheap-gas Khia car and tried to force Charbroiler to head home. Janet realized that the damnit monster wasn't going to cooperate so she too tried to force him home using the feed truck. He just let us get right up to him and then he would trot around us and head off to the other end of the pasture, not helping out at all. A couple of times he seemed like he was going to bump me. In that little car I would've rolled right over.

I went and got my Tundra. Janet went home and got the 'Gator', which is a 4-wheel drive vehicle that they use to run cattle. I got a beer too. Things were getting fun. We would trap Blacky into a corner and he would lower his head and charge a little and snort and bounce around. But soon he would take off, snorting at us in a way that made me think he was cow-laughing or something.

After a while we realized that if we moved ever so slowly, and didn't let him have an opening, we could force him towards the corral. When we finally got him inside the fence I held it shut while Janet went and found some wire and we sealed up the gate. Steve was better the next day and he was out mending the break in the fence that Charbroiler had exploited.

Janet told me that it was time for me to graduate from a city-boy to cowboy since I did so well. I went out and bought a cowboy hat.