Oh, how I love to see our cows and calves happy. They know what they want and need, and sometimes they know it before we do.
It had stopped raining for a bit. There was so much to do. My Hero, while busy with farm mechanic duties, works hard. I decided that I would cut the lawn while he played with his wrenches. That turned out to reveal something I would never have thought possible.
The lawn was more like a hay field with all the rain that we had been blessed with. The motor on the lawn tractor kept dying down to remind me to slow down, and that I did. Under our black walnut trees were many branches lying around. I parked the lawn tractor and hopped off to pick the biggest ones up.
That was when my foot, clad in my old shoes, suddenly felt squishy and slipped a little. My first thought was that one of our cows had broken out the night before. They probably had a little stroll to check out the green grass and then hopped back over the fence before morning. It has been obvious to me. Every day, they lined up behind that fence and stared at me. That whole “grass is greener on the other side" thing is true.
I looked down. Well, I am not a scat (poop) expert, but I recognized this pile. It was not cow manure. Oh yes, this I had come across before, usually in the bush at the back of the farm.
Bear scat. Behind my house, under my black walnut tree, not twenty feet from my kitchen window. Instinct had me look up the tree. Of course, there was no bear, but you never know. I knew it had been under the tree.
Every night since that day, I have stood at the kitchen window at all different hours to look up that tree and see if it was back. This bear had apparently been out to explore the neighbourhood.
There seems to be a lot of exploring going on.
Early Friday morning, we noticed cows were on both sides of the fence. Not a good sign. There were about six cows on the other side of the closed gate of our neighbour's property. Those cows were all Moms, and the calves were on our side, bawling. We have no idea how long they had been over there, nor how they arrived there.
Of course, we had a very important appointment in town that we could not miss in about two hours. What does a farmer do? Well, I pulled on my boots and ran. I locked our cows out of the field behind our house. They were not happy about that. I then ran over and opened the gate to the neighbour's property.
Sandy, one of our older cows, came home right away. Her calf bawled in our laneway the loudest. The other escaped cows stood in tall green grass up to their bellies and would have no part of ending this adventure. The fact that their calves were bawling made no difference to them.
There was only one thing to do. We do know it was probably Sandy who had led the breakout. She has always been an explorer. I let Sandy the escapist back to join her calf. Now we had to figure out where the fence was down, in the bush. No problem, we had an hour or so.
My Hero grabbed black-wire and fence pliers. We both hopped into the tractor. He found one rail low, so we stopped to fix it. I walked the fence line and found where it looked like a parade of cows had trudged through the mud for hours, back and forth. There was hair stuck to the top rail. They had not broken any fence as we had thought. They had just hopped over a low spot in the fence. Smart cows, they are. It was lucky only six had figured that out. My Hero drove down to where I was, and we wired it up and put more rails on it.
Now was the time to run to our appointment. We had half an hour left. We would deal with the fence and let the cows over to the neighbour's pasture when we returned. In our experiences, now that they have explored and found treasure, there would be absolutely nothing that was going to stop them.
We did make that appointment. I apologized for my attire and my "earthy scent.
We had a cow emergency”.
In the end, our cows were let over to the neighbour's pasture. It all worked out for them. I wish I knew where that bear went.