A Comedy of Cattle

I’ve always been a little suspicious of cows. I don’t feel this way because I believe them to be malicious or conniving. I just respond with mistrust when I look into the eyes of another creature, especially one that carries over ten times my body weight around on only twice as many feet, and get that disconcerting feeling that there just ain’t more than half a dozen synapses firing in there. A horse may act as irrationally sometimes, but a deep look in its eyes and you know that sucker is ready to take you for everything you own if you just drop your guard for one moment. Mischievous bastards they are. I can respect that. Cows? Cows are just dumb. Nothing good ever came from a cow with power.

So you can imagine the sinking feeling I got when I woke to a mottled sunrise, a cacophony of birdsongs, and four goddamned bovines out for a leisurely stroll about my front yard this morning. Oh, crap. Where are my pants?

It’s a rite of passage in rural America to have that first joyride get totally out of control. Usually it’s just a mailbox stand that gets broken along with that most fragile of fragiles, a male teenage ego. Sometimes it’s a few bones and on occasion the results are more tragic. Alcohol is regularly involved. This time it was just scrapes and bruises and about 100 feet of fence lost along the blacktop adjacent to the front pasture.

And that’s what happened to my only bale of alfalfa. That’ll be important later on in the story. See, I had to use it to lure the cattle through the gate into the back pasture. Anyway, I quickly pounded a few posts and hung what was left of the netting back on them, but a more thorough fence mending job would be needed before the cows would reliably stay put out front, where they’re supposed to be this time of year.

Running around this morning, trying to ascertain where each cow was, I used the contents of my kitchen compost bins – remember I’ve got no alfalfa left - to get three of the wayward girls back into the confines of the back pasture, after finding and locking the obscure gate through which their adventure unfolded. Only the alpha female, the only sister in the herd still with horns on her head, remained at-large. And she was in a relatively safe spot, far from the gate I needed her to enter, but also far from the entrances to the vineyards. Cows and grapevines do not mix. Actually, they do mix, but the results aren’t particularly good for the grapevines.

At this point I need bait. I’m also smothered in mud from the waist down and need a cup of coffee. Badly. So I leave Ms Explorer to her own where I can watch her through the window and head inside. I take off my muddy pants on the porch. Mistake number three.

My wife gets irritated that I do her laundry. I don’t foul it up too bad, but growing up my Dad always got aggravated about us kids leaving dirty clothes around the house, expecting Mom to clean them, so I instinctively avoid that problem by maniacally getting ahead on the clothes washing. Sometimes to my own detriment.

I drop my muddy jeans in the washer with darks, press go, brew coffee, and note the location of the cow. I check my email, serve toast to my son, pour my coffee and check the location of the cow. I grab a couple of bananas for breakfast AND bait and look for the cow. OK, she’s moving. But where are my pants?

Unfortunately, in my haste to keep elements of my attire properly cleaned, all my pants are either soaking wet in the washer or soaking wet in the dryer from the night before. Oh crap, where is my cow?

You can yell at a cow and get it to move. Part of their stupidity is that they could overpower a rancher or trample a fence with negligible effort but won’t because, well, they're too dumb. Only problem is, there’s not a whole hell of a lot of predicting where that cow’s going to go after you yell at her.

After stuffing one banana into myself and one banana into my son, I run out into the surprisingly chilly autumnal air to see her heading straight towards the newly replanted zinfandel. One year old, it will make such a tasty treat. My yells have only a delaying effect, the ungulate undeterred from her intended snack. Only by racing around three trees and a stretch of 40 year-old, now irrelevant, fenceline, do I head her off at the pass.

So there I find myself, standing in a mud puddle in my underwear, keeping 1800 pounds of hungry beef out of 10 acres of zinfandel armed with just two banana peels hanging by my hips like six-shooters. Not exactly the scene I pictured when my senior photo was taken in high school.

Well, not-so-little Ms Adventure was so enthralled by the first banana peel that she turned and followed me to the nearest gate for the second. A few handfuls of stockpiled, months-old cut grass also helped. The fresh grazings are still pretty slim although the rains have begun and California has started the transition from dusty brown to muddy green.

Deep down, I know that cow doesn’t wish harm to me or my livelihood. I can’t really blame her for trying to consume all she can see. And the list of things that her consumption accomplishes for me is long: the grass stays cut low for fire prevention, my garden grows rich from her “contributions,” there’s even a financial plus from letting her graze here.

Helpful, yes. But I still think they're stupid. And I still don’t trust them. Kinda like free markets.