The Day the Cows got Away

Mere moments after I started up this blog and posted my first post, I started having second thoughts. They went something like this, "What in the world am I going to blog about. I don't actually do anything interesting. I get up, clean the house, go to work, come home, make dinner, do more house cleaning, and go to bed. No one wants to read (or for that matter, write) about that! I don't even have neighbors with interesting quirks".

But then yesterday happened. My only neighbors, the cows, proved to be very quirky. And all my fears of an uneventful existence were dispelled.

It started off like a fairly typical day. I left pretty early in the cold and miserable wind and rain to go have breakfast with a friend. Upon returning, as I turned down our driveway, I noticed the cows seemed to be a little closer to the house than they usually are. In fact, they were in my drive way and all around my house. I have a tendency to over-react about farm-life stuff (i.e. being very much concerned for the well being of a new-born cow that looked a little sick ish. Apparently they all look that way right after they are born. Who knew). So this time I tried to come up with a reasonable non-crisis type explanation for why the cows would be out of the pasture. However, as I parked my car, and went to open my door, only to be greeted by a very large black cow, reasonable explanations became impossible. Cows are much bigger and scarier when they are mud covered and on the same side of the fence as you. I called my landlady.

"Hi Landlady, there are cows in my driveway"
"Big cows or little cows?" (note, the baby cows like to wander out of the pasture. Little cows in my driveway would be significantly less shocking)
"Quite a few big cows"
"Oh....I'll be right there" *click*


By this time the herd had wandered past my house and were headed towards the nursery that is past the fields. So my puppy and I felt it was safe to venture outside. We watched the cows get smaller and smaller in the distance, wondering if this had ever happened before, and what the ramifications of losing that many cows would be. And where did the cows think they were going? Would people in this part of the country take in stray cows they way many people take in stray cats and such?

Soon enough, my landlady and a fellow who works on the farm showed up. They quickly assessed the situation and the landlady turned around and drove back to the farm house to get her "buggy" (i.e. super-cool-all-terrain golf cart that they use to get about the farm quickly). A few minutes later the buggy goes flying down the drive way!

I watched the whole situation unfold, but I am still not entirely sure how she did it, but soon enough all the cows were rounded up and heading quickly back up the driveway, and back to their pasture.


I enjoyed the whole experience because I got to "save the day" in a way, and I got to do it from the warmth of my living room, while my landlady was getting soaked and muddy rounding up those big creatures. My puppy enjoyed the excitement mostly because she enjoys interesting smells, and there are now cow pies in our driveway which are much easier to get to than the ones in the pasture. All in all, a very exciting morning!

There is never a dull moment when living on a farm I suppose. This incident may even top the time where I encountered a bear while walking the dog. But that story will be for another post.