The Cows

The neighbor's cows have become a bigger part of our existence than we had anticipated.  Specifically, a band of about 18 of them are running loose around the neighborhood.  The neighbor has not been successful in containing them.  

These are not the actual cow thugs, but they look like the cow thugs

.

I call them the cow thugs.

Here are some recent, cow-related incidents:

The horses decided I was a major hero the other morning, one of the first days when the cow thugs were grazing on our land right outside the horses' pasture.  The horses were in a high-necked, freaked state, but the cows had been there long enough that the horses were past the spooking and bolting phase. 

When I saw the cows thugs, I grabbed an empty plastic grocery bag and approached the fence with authority.  When I had the cow thugs' attention, I raised the bag above my head with an impressive, whooshing, crinkly-bag sound and the cows all rushed back through the neighbor's loose fence that doesn't contain them. 

My horses were obviously relieved that the cows were gone, and Dee so much so that she followed me all the way back down to the run-in with her face practically pressed to my back.

Starlight verified her cowiness the other night when I was still out of town.  My husband reported that the cow thugs were by the fence again, so he went to chase them.  Before he had a chance to do so, though, the cows all started running away.  He looked around to see our chunky little black and white pony charging the cows.  Good girl!  I always knew she had it in her.

It's as though she was saying to my husband, "Don't trouble yourself -- I've got this one."

When I got home from worked tonight, the cow thugs were all down by our pond, sleeping and grazing on our hay field.  I stopped at the neighbor's house to ask him to move his cows, but he didn't come to the door.  

This is when I made the irrational decision to drive my little tiny Ford ZX2 down the dirt road, that runs along our pasture, and into the field to chase the cows.  I COULD have chosen the tractor or the four-wheel-drive diesel dually, but no, I chose the little tiny Ford that I was driving home, and it sits about 6 inches off the ground in all its two-wheel drive glory.

I actually did a half way decent job herding those cow thugs with my Ford, and boy were they surprised about it.  When I got them on the run back toward their own place, though, the inevitable happened and the Ford sunk into mud about a foot and a half deep.  Tried though I might to get it out, the only direction I could move it was deeper into the mud.

I was pretty steamed when I stomped up the dirt road to the house, mud on my shoes, briefcase in hand, but not nearly as irked as my husband was when he came home and had to pull the Ford out of the muck with the tractor. 

I see many, tall, cow-proof fences in my future...