Seems to be a definite animal theme here at the moment! True story from last night: It’s one in the morning and our dog Merlin jumps up and starts barking. Not completely unusual as he’s very sensitive to when things come in our yard. “Okay Merlin – lay down now.” Then he did it a little while later, so John got up and checked out the window with the flashlight – didn’t see anything – could hear cows moving around in the fields behind us (we live in a town of 100 people and lots more cows) – went back to bed. A few minutes later a HUGE COW BELLOW breaks through the night – sounds VERY close. Too close? Now BOTH dogs are running around barking. John gets up again, “Oh, %$#@*&!! Kristen – we’ve got a cow in the yard!” I grab the broom and go outside (in my nightgown, limping somewhat as my body recovers from a pinched nerve in my back LOL) – luckily the moon is full. We notice it’s one of the mother cows, and she’s a little agitated. Sometimes they can go through this one section of barbed wire fencing across the road, so John went to open one of the gates so we could “shoo” her out. But wait – there are like two MORE cows in our side pasture – ahhhh – must’ve broken through a weak part of the wooden fence and then come into our adjacent yard. Then I spot the mother’s little calf outside the whole perimeter – ahhh – mother can’t figure out how to get out! One of the other cows tries to come in our yard – I wave the broom and tell it to turn around, nothing to see here. And it does – whew!

John circles around the house to block off another go-around and I become the “cow whisperer” – hoping she can pick up on the thoughts and verbal directions I’m sending her about going back into the side yard. I figure waving a broom that way doesn’t hurt either. Promptly, she clops out into the road instead. *rolling eyes* I tell her it’s okay and suggest she can leave out THAT gate too, if she wants. Apparently, that’s when she changed her mind and decided to go back to the side pasture… I stand by my Honda Civic (it already forcefully met a cow a while back – once is enough) with the broom, and she storms by me about 10 feet away and goes into the side yard!

John grabs the iron gate from the front of our yard and drags it to the opening of the side pasture (doesn’t have a closeable gate) – we attach it with bungie cords. The cows are running around there now, so then we have to tell them to go through the hole they ALREADY made in the fence -eventually, they find it, mother and child and friends are reunited OUTSIDE our yard, we’re kinda laughing and confused, and can go back inside now and apologize to Merlin for not taking him seriously at first.

I’m wondering now why most “animal” sites don’t give you an entry for “cow”?? Even the book I have only lists “bulls” and there weren’t any bulls around (luckily – been there – done that.) I think it was mostly us just agreeing to help the cow out – answering her call for assistance – hmmm! (When we move to a house in a real “town”, I’ll laugh if the neighbors complain about people’s cats or dogs running loose through their yards. *grin* I think I’m going to take a nap now.)