We got Cows!!!!

It's amusing how reading another's journal can bring back a flood of memories in my mind. I had a couple of those moments today and had decided that I would share this one.

The movie 'Twister' always awakes this memory in me with that line, 'We got cows' as the characters watch horrified as the cow goes swirling by in the raging twister. Yes, I watch a lot of movies.

Anyway, it was a beautiful, sunny, summer morning. One of those lazy weekend days where we had been contemplating what we would do all day but just decided that we weren't motivated to do much of anything. Our entire family was sitting around watching television, gabbing, and just being completely and utterly lifeless. I had yet to get off my butt to go take a shower so was sitting around in my jammies as were about half of the rest of them.

Our oldest daughter, being the flighty one of the family as well as the joker was up and about and she looked out our deck door and exclaimed, "We got cows in our driveway!" Of course none of us believed her as we had been poking fun all morning and it took her a minute to finally get us up off the couch to go look. Sure enough, there were cows in our yard.

We do live in an area where farms are all around us but not cattle or horse farms. Usually more of the grain and wheat type so this is not a typical site out our door. There are a couple of places up the road with cows that you can certainly smell on a day the wind is blowing just right or you can here 'moo' on a really quiet day which in itself is quite funny.

Anyway, what did we do, decisions. Well, we called our nearest neighbor because they were meandering over to his fields and then called the police. I mean really, we had cows, how in the world were we supposed to deal with this dilemma. We knew that they would be sorely missed being beef cows. We weren't sure what the cops could do but all they same they sent out a squad.

After we spoke with the neighbor who figured he knew who's cows they were and the police, our whole family picked itself up off the couch and being the curious ever helpful good neighbors went out to spectate and try to keep the cows near so they wouldn't go near the county highway located just 1/4 mile down the road. Of course we didn't know what to do except to keep an eye.

Well, Pat being the more helpful of the bunch decided that he was going to try to get a little closer and perhaps round them up because they were scattering quite a bit. One of them had decided that it was going to take a hike back into the woods. Well, guess what, Pat thought he best follow it and try to lure it back to our yard.

In the mean time, the cop showed up and then suddenly neighbors slowly started to pull up, asking what all the hubbub was, using our phone to call this neighbor and that neighbor and that neighbor and the owner was finally found. The cop stood on the street with me and the kids and pondered what exactly it was his duty was in all of this.

Well, Pat disappeared into the woods while we kept an eye on the 12 or 13 that were here and there. I was meeting our neighbors for the first time since we had moved in roughly 6-7 years before this day and in talking to the cop discovered that he was our new local policeman for our quaint little city. During all these introductions, it dawned on me that I was still in my skimpy summer jammies and my kids too were in their jams. Man, how embarrassing this realization was. But no one seemed to care which was good but I found myself feeling slightly uncomfortable all the same.

After awhile, we were all wondering where in the heck Pat was. He had been in the woods for a good 10-15 minutes. His fear of course was that the cow would travel through the woods back to another busy county road which is near the river and that wouldn't be good. There are ravines and such that it could've gotten hurt in on the way too.

With practically our entire neighborhood standing around the road and in our drive it was as if we were having a party. Laughing, joking about what an odd occurence this was for us, getting acquainted, Pat suddenly appears trotting out of the woods at a pretty good pace. The big question being, 'Where's the cow?" . He had a funny look on his face at the time and it wasn't too long before we all figured out where that cow was. It was chasing him. He reached us and was huffing and puffing trying to tell us what had occurred back in those woods.

He followed this cow to the edge of the woods, tried calling it like a dog, a horse, a human and nothing was working. They stood staring at each other and Pat noticed that it was scraping the ground with it's front hoof. We all know what that means. So he started to turn back towards our house. So did the cow and with each 'pick-up-of-the-pace' that Pat attempted, the cow would double that leading Pat to the trotting. Ultimately, he had led the cow out of the woods and back into the arms of it's fellow moo friends as well as the owner who had showed up.

We all got a good laugh out of that one and a good tale to talk about. It certainly made our really boring lifeless day exciting. And we met our local cop and neighbors who had sent us Christmas cards over the years and we had no idea who they were. Just that they lived down the road. I will never forget that look on Pat's face that day nor the image of him running from that cow.