Five-thirty Friday morning brought some unexpected "excitement" to Blackhammer Acres. About a week ago, our neighboring farmer said he'd be checking his fence in the enclosed front woods / pasture area of our property where he lets his cows graze during the spring, summer and early fall.
Great! I love waking up to the sound of mooing cows and I love watching them up close. Well, Friday was that day. The cows sounded a little louder than I recalled from summers past, but the mama's have their young calves now and it's not unusual for them to talk... I got up right before my scheduled alarm and because our bedroom window overlooks both the enclosed pasture and our backyard, I saw right away that the herd of cows was in our backyard and NOT in the enclosed pasture (the farmer has about 35 mamas and probably that many or more babies).
What to do? I couldn't think straight. I had a dog that needed to go outside but I didn't want to let her out with cows and their young right there. I needed to find the farmer's phone # but couldn't remember what I had done with it. I wanted to look up the phone # online, but had to plug in my internet and wait for my computer to start up first. Finally, I landed on an old telephone book and looked him up... not listed...then I remembered that his wife used a different last name, I looked her up...eureka! I called but no one answered so I left a discombobulated message about the cows being in our unfenced side yard (not far from the road). I wasn't sure I had the right voice mail / answering machine because there was no "Hi, this is so and so, please leave a message".
I took a shower hoping that when done, the farmer would have received the message but I had no indication this was the case. I recalled that he worked at a dairy down the road, so I looked up a phone number; but there was no answer and no ability to leave a message. Great! Now what? I decided to get in my car and go to the dairy.
On my way to my car, I saw that the cows had moved closer to the road and were now in our newly half planted garden (ahhh). I shooed them away and it worked for a while. They ran, but then they stopped, they turned around (sideways really) and looked at me. The animal closest to me was "the bull". He was really standing his ground and the others were taking his lead. Then he / they started to walk slowly toward me. No no no. Wrong way. Shoo!
Because I was no longer having any effect and I was a little nervous given their size and their new found boldness, I got in my car as originally intended and set course for said dairy.
On turning the corner and driving just a little, I saw what looked to be the farmer's car heading toward me. I wasn't certain that it was him, but knowing that at most I might see 5 cars a day on our roads, I took a chance, stopped, rolled down my window, and started waiving "frantically" trying to flag him down. It worked, I told him his cows were out in our yard. He asked in a rather "demanding" voice "How'd they get out?" My answer, "I don't know, but I think it was by the cattle gate between our outbuildings" (it turns out that this was the case; the gate was open when I finally was able to take the time to look).
He drove to his farm and I turned around and drove home. When I got there, there wasn't a cow in sight. Not one; not anywhere to be seen. The farmer arrives with his UTV (he had swapped out vehicles) and was looking at me like I was crazy. I was signaling the direction I thought the cows had gone based on the direction they originally ran when I first shooed them. We have a vast pasture area punctuated by woods and the farmer's land abuts our land to the north. If all went well, the cows were near the back forty's electric fence separating his property from ours.
I went inside, made breakfast, and was just sitting down to work when the farmer came back (maybe 30 minutes to an hour later) saying he got them all. Whew!
As to the mystery of how it happened, I can only surmise that the chain that keeps that gate closed came loose - either with encouragement or otherwise. We rarely, if ever, use that gate and when we do, we are sure to close it back up again "securely".
Finally, Ed arrived and boy, did I have a story to tell (I would have called with my story; in fact, I was dying to call with my story; but, I knew from talking the night before that Ed had an exceptionally busy and deadline driven day). Ed's first question in a rather "demanding" voice: "Well, how'd that happen?"
I can't help but feel a little guilty even though I'm almost certain I had not used that gate since last fall when I did some mowing back there...
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