Monday Morning Musings - No Bull!

This picture was taken Saturday afternoon from my kitchen window. On any given day, I can take a similar picture from my kitchen window, only there is usually a black fence betwixt me and this creature. I don't know what to call it, to be perfectly honest. I'm not too up on my horned cattle. Is it cow? A bull? A longhorn? A sumpthin'? I don't know. Somebody tell me what it is.

Whatever it is, it was in my back yard on Saturday. And in this picture it looks deceptively small. 'Cause in for real life, it's real big.

It was only a few days ago that I was expressing my concern to Steve that when our yard is in and the kids are outside playing and one of them makes one of those animals mad, it won't take much for them to push past that scrawny little fence that is keeping them in. Steve didn't seem to bothered by it. But let me tell ya. He was bothered by it when it was trompin' through the mud and grass seed in the back yard. I tried to call the ranch to tell them they had an animal loose, but I couldn't find a number for them. So I called the police who called animal control. The policeman was waiting in his car for animal control to come and the...OK, I'm gonna call it a cow for the sake of calling it something....anyways, the COW had walked out of our yard and was grazing elsewhere.

Then he started walking back into my yard and I yelled for Steve. "STEPHEN! IT'S COMIN' BACK IN OUR YARD!!!". At which point Steve went outside and may or may not have started throwing rocks in the general direction of the animal. At this point let me just say that a lot of blood, sweat, tears, money and muddy shoes went into making that dirt smooth enough for grass seed. And another lot of all that went into putting grass seed and fertilizer in just days before! And it was all muddy because it had just rained and snowed. And heck if I want somebody's cow trompin' through my mud and seed just because they can't put up and maintain a proper fence!

Ok, so anyway...if rocks were hurled in the general direction of the cow, it may or may not have caused him to, not back up and go back where he was, but to just run straight forward through my yard and keep running. And I may or may not have been glad because my worse nightmare was for all the animal control people and the cow to be tearing up the mud and seed in my back yard.

Well...the running cow ran right over and into a fence with a horse. And apparently cows and horses don't get along too well. A fight ensued. All the other cattle walked over to the fence where the horse and cow were dukin' it out. Then all the people who were working on the house being built across the street walked over to the fence to watch. Then the policeman drove over. Then animal control pulled up. And Steve and the kids and I all stood staring out the window, transfixed. We were on our way out the door to go to a movie when we first noticed the visitor in our yard. But the movie was soon forgotten amid all the excitement right outside our window. We stood, along with everyone else, watching for about half an hour. When it looked as if nothing else exciting was going to happen and that animal control was just going to sit and continue to watch, we were finally able to tear ourselves away from the backyard drama.

We came home several hours later to find everything back to normal. I don't know how it was all resolved. And this morning the cattle were all moved to a field on the other side of the ranch, away from the residential side. So for now, all's quiet on the home front and any danger of children being trampled has been removed. Now when the mud dries out, we (meaning Steve) get to go out and fix all the gigantuous hoof prints in the yard and put down more seed.