Always on a Friday

What is it about Fridays? This past Friday I came home from the dreaded weekly shopping trip, (quite late actually because we had to go to Ellen's Play Day picnic, but more on that some other time perhaps), got the sleeping child down for her nap and was headed back out to get groceries when I spotted a lone heifer ambling up the ditch from Mother in law's place.

*sigh*

Great! Hubby and MIL are gone. He left the 4-wheeler up at MIL's place. So I hot-foot it out there. Heifer spots me and bawls once or twice. She knows the jig is up and comes toward me a bit. Then she gets skittish and trots back along the fence line. I think; good, I can herd her back down further on to our place. Ha. Wishful thinking.

She turns around and heads back up the highway, this time forsaking the ditch and walking on the pavement. About this time the neighbor couple come by on their little motorscooter. He gets off and comes forward to help, but the heifer freaks out and goes galloping straight toward them. The gal, who is on the other side of the scooter, freaks out herself and starts squealing and hopping around.

At this point, if I hadn't been so frazzled, I would have thrown myself on the ground and rolled around laughing my head off at the gal's reaction. It was one of those moments when one gets struck by this irrational hysteria; you are under stress but the humor in the situation gets the best of you. If I weren't familiar with the behaviour of bovines and a 500-600 pound, horned beast came charging at me, I'd have freaked out too. But, anyway...

The heifer did stop, I thanked the guy for his offer of help and walked up to MIL's to get the 4-wheeler. However. Hubby had taken the key out of it so it wouldn't disappear, and rightly so, but it didn't help my situation. So I headed BACK up the road and, on foot, chased the heifer around the house, back down toward the back gate behind the barn. She went back and forth in front of said gate a time or two before she went into it.

Thank you Lord!

Later we found out she'd snacked on MIL's strawberry plants and left hoofprints all over the yard. That day we loaded her up and took her to the heifer herd in Windyville.

Comments

Unknown said…
Wow! Never a dull day on the farm, eh? :) This morning, I woke up and gazed out the window to admire our beautiful fields. I had to do a double take because I swear I spotted "the girls" in the field (where they were NOT supposed to be!). Sure enough, they jumped fence and were right behind our house. Nice.

BTW, I tried to e-mail you a few times but my messages keep bouncing back! :(
April 21, 2009 at 9:59 PM
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