Cattle on the loose do leave calling cards

It was 12:30 a.m. and the telephone was calling me. I finally came to enough to know what to do and answered it with a sort of grunted hello. The voice on the other end was not a normal speaking voice, it was kind of shrieking and hard to understand. I finally understood it was our neighbor to the north who lives alone and runs about a hundred cows by himself.

He slowed down enough to say dogs had run his cows through the fence on the highway pasture and all the cattle were out and scattered. The pack of wild dogs had killed one of the calves and things had gone from bad to worse real quick.

He needed help and so I was up and partially dressed while he was talking. I assured him help was on the way and called the older offspring to meet me and rally the younger one, too.

I arrived to a mess of cattle barreling down the highway headed south. I got them stopped with the help of old Dog and we held them there waiting for the offspring. It didn’t take them long to appear and we got the owner on the phone to tell him we had part of the herd and needed to push them toward home.

He had gone north and saw tracks on the pavement but had not found the rest of the bovine. He was on his way to head the ones we had coming into his corral. We knew from that conversation that the hunt was long from over.

Cattle that are spooked by a dog pack are not normal acting and these were certainly not. They circled more than moving forward and a good horse would have been a blessing. We did get them going and hoped they didn’t hit any driveways or county roads going east or west as we moved north. I was thankful the calves were all old enough to travel and wanted to stay with the herd. We finally got them to the pens and started looking for the ones that had gone on the other way.

We got to our little community and, because we have a fine community building and four churchyards that are mowed and manicured, we found clusters of cows and calves in each one of them. They had found the grazing to their liking and had settled down to business. Of course, they were leaving their calling cards all over sidewalks and driveways. We knew the Sunday crowd would be pleased!

We sent the owner back down the road to head them in as they got there and the three of us started them easy, no yelling or acting silly because we sure didn’t want another scatter. The old lead cow finally gave up the picnic and headed home trotting. That enticed the rest of the hides to join in and we didn’t have any trouble getting them there.

We promised to be back after church and help mend the fence and that neighbor was a grateful feller. So we all got home in time to eat breakfast and do morning chores and get ready for church.

It is my opinion, and everyone has one, folks should realize that livestock are the bread and butter of this area. We have livestock of some sort on most acres of this corner of the county and almost all who attend one of the four churches raise some themselves.

Now, we all know that if an animal eats to live it will also need to pass the leftovers out. As my old Pappy taught me many years ago, it is just grass and water well used.

I was using my innocent face and smiling as I said howdy and stepped carefully around a fresh patty. Some of the folks were being just plain indignant over finding some splatter on the church sidewalk. Who would have thought it would cause such an uproar? I can say I enjoyed the carrying on and my close relative punched me in the ribs and said for me to stop smirking. Go figure!