A lesson still not learned: steers are loose
When the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team leaves their locker room, every member of the team hits a sign that says “Play Like A Champion Today”. In our barn we have a sign that says “Shut And Fasten Gate” and I guess my sisters and I need to start hitting it on our way out of the barn every day.
That’s right, after about six years of showing cattle you would think I would finally chain the gate. But, no instead I just fill the water tank right next to it and leave the gate alone. This was an awesome way to start off Friday, let me tell you! To say my dad was mad is about as big of an understatement as saying Notre Dame is overrated at football!
He was fuming.
Right after dad saw they were out, we started searching for hoofprints and poop to see where they went. I guess I could say I was working on my detective skills but I’m certainly not Sherlock Holmes. When we couldn’t find any prints dad hopped in the truck to go look and I went to wake up the usual hero of having cattle out, my mom. Dad was driving all up and down our road and around the block. Until finally he came and picked us up and we drove around looking for them. Do you know how hard it is to find four black steers and a black cow in the dark? I’m sure you don’t because you probably chain your gates. But it is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
Dad dropped me off at home to get ready for school, but my mom made the executive decision that since we caused this problem, we weren’t walking away from it and called us in late. That means we were riding around the Greater Fryburg area looking in the dark for cattle. I was lucky to be with my dad and away from my sisters who seemed to think that every clump of grass or shrub in the distance were the cattle we were looking for.
Just as it seemed like we were never going to find our four family pets and the destructive cow, the sun came up and my dad thought he saw something moving at a neighbor’s farm. As we got closer, it turned out that we found them, we just now had to figure out how to get them loaded.
My mom, who you will remember I said was the hero of chasing cattle, remembered to bring some halters with her in her truck and as luck would have it our steers are tame enough that we could walk up and drape the rope halter over their heads and walk them onto our trailer. My sister Kate caught the cow and handed her to my dad while Caroline and I got the other steers and with mom’s help, all five were on the trailer and headed home in less than 15 minutes.
It was an awful lot of drama to start a Friday morning and you would think that I had learned my lesson but as I was walking into basketball practice Saturday morning, my mom called to tell me that the cow was standing in the barnyard. Yes, she walked in without a fight, but I really think my sisters and I need to hit that sign on our way out of the barn and maybe we won’t forget to chain the gate.
P.S. My mom didn’t want me to tell this story because she didn’t want our family to look like goofballs in the newspaper. I told her I would make it clear that there are only three goofballs in this story and their names are Jack, Caroline and Kate.