After what seemed like weeks of nothing happening, with every day silently fading into the next and barely a ripple to distinguish one from another, last week gave me two different but similar jolts of adrenalin pumping surprises.
THE COWS IN THE CORN
I had spent another morning hanging around the house as usual – wasting far too much time at non-productive, computer-based activities – and I decided to make my way over to Mary’s place to continue some trimming I’ve been doing. It’s not far, but far enough that I took the car, driving my customary 25 miles-per-hour across the narrow streets of town.
As I was crossing the low water bridge over Cypress Creek, I was surprised to see three people on horseback coming down the creek bottom – these parts of the creek are privately owned, and I’d not seen riders here before. They were moving quickly enough, and I was paying little enough attention, that the lead horse had to check up to avoid a close call with my car.
My surprise turned to shock when I saw, happily trotting along behind the trio of horses, two cows that I recognized as the pair that are being boarded in Mary’s back pasture.
As I have said, I know very little about large livestock, but I have learned that cows – though they look slow and docile – are great escape artists, and will exploit any hole in a fence to get to greener pastures. Just a couple of weeks earlier, one of Mary’s animals had been hit by a car (she’s fine – it was harder on the car than the cow, actually) so I knew what a headache loose ones could cause.
Throwing caution to the winds, I slammed my Intrepid into park and launched myself at the heifers to keep them from crossing the road. The riders offered to help, but the horses were causing more confusion than we could have overcome, so they went on their way. There I was – just me and my two hands – keeping very tenuous control over more than a thousand pounds of rather excited livestock.
Fortunately, God made the cow a pretty timid animal, and they were more afraid of me than I of them, so I was able to herd them toward a corner in the fence line and know that they weren’t going any further. I stood with them for a while, wondering exactly what to do next. My car was still in the middle of the road, we were more than a quarter-mile from home, and I had no idea if anyone knew about the problem and would come to help.
I decided to risk leaving the animals to save the car, so I ran back to move into a safer parking place, but when I returned the cows were nowhere in sight! Now, these are not small animals; I could not understand how they got away without my noticing. I’m sure I looked pretty silly for a few minutes, running around until I found them “hiding” behind a small outbuilding, contentedly munching the only green grass in the vicinity.
I watched them eat for a while, pondering what to do. I finally decided that the only acceptable course of action was to try to push everybody towards home and hope for reinforcements. There was a solid fence line down one side of the entire lane between where we were and our ultimate goal, and I figured that I could keep them moving along that without too much trouble.
I hooted and waved a little bit to get them moving, and things were going just fine until we had to pass the large, spineless cactus growing in Mr. Shafer’s yard – a prized ornamental that’s been squatting there as long as I’ve been coming to Comfort. I’m not sure if it was especially tasty, or it was just the lack of any other fodder lately, but the cows would not come away. They ate a good number of paddles before I could shoo them along – and because I had to get pretty close to prod them, I left my flank exposed and the leader made a break for the creek. Lots of shouting and flailing ensued, but I was able to keep things on my side of the water, at least.
There were several other adventures as we made our way back toward home. A lot of running to keep in front and waving my arms to keep things together and missing the gate back to pasture and making our way back. Still, forty minutes later, we had two cows back behind bars and I was still in one piece.
Of course, as I was walking back to my car, both Mary and her hand (the cows’ actual owner) finally drove up the lane. I let Darrell walk the fence line and repair the hole – I was worn out.
I did learn some things. Patience is a virtue in this situation, as spooked cows can run really fast. Given a chance, cows will stay together, and you can use that to your advantage. And, cattle give very little warning before – uh – “voiding”, so it’s best to keep a good distance between yourself and the southern end of a north-bound cow.
HAMSTERS IN THE LIVING ROOM
Through a regrettable lack of animal knowledge, we accidentally gave Madeline a mixed-sex pair of Hamsters for Christmas. With astonishing – and I suppose admirable – speed, our little buck, “Stuff”, succeeded in bringing the doe “Puff” (Puff ‘n’ Stuff, get it?) into ‘the family way’ – though at the time we didn’t know it.
As Puff became more and more belligerent toward Stuff and began to put on weight, it dawned on us what was happening. Maddee did some on-line research and we learned what we could. We separated the pair and settled in to enjoy our little lesson in husbandry.
A surprisingly short number of days later, we had a litter of 10 little pink pups (we counted them later – we couldn’t see underneath mama for quite a while.) They grew surprisingly quickly, and Maddee did a great job of taking good care of them. [I'll post pictures later.]
A couple of weeks passed. All was well, until one very early morning when Maddee tearfully tugged on Jane’s covers one morning to tell us that “the hamsters got out and this one is dead.” She was trying to stay calm, but she had a pitiful little ball of fur in one hand and tears streaming down her face. It was heartbreaking.
It seems that a piece of the cage had come loose. Almost all of the 11 hamsters had made their way out of the cage, some all the way out into the living room by way of a crack under Maddee’s bedroom door. The search was on.
The first find was an unfortunate cat victim. Thankfully, though dead, he was not gnawed upon – that would have been dreadful. Oddly enough, it was the cats who helped up round up several crafty hiders, as they were ‘laying’ for the young things, who seemed completely oblivious to the danger.
Within about an hour we found seven alive – one with an injured back leg which has since healed remarkably well. Two were confirmed dead, and one died later – we presume from trauma of some kind. One of the little buggers stayed out of trouble for more than two days before being brought safely back home, and one is still unaccounted for.
It took a few days, but Maddee came to the right frame of mind about the tragedy. As I was tucking her in later that week, she allowed as how “if I’m going to live in Comfort, I’ll have to get used to animals dying.” She was referring, of course, to the natural course of agricultural livestock, not necessarily pets, but I think it still was a good lesson to draw from our experience. I suppose it will be onward to larger things soon.
Two animal (mis)adventures in one week. I marvel at what life may hold in store for me next.
