High Tailin' It
MacKay's had just moved in on the Gilmour Farm next place down the road from us. King and Myrna and their three boys and their beautiful daughter, Shelly. It was the summer of 1984, and we were young and fast and strong. Rodney and Scott and Mike were work-hardened, bronze skinned lads from manually slugging all summer with hot asphalt in the family business, King's Paving.
King wanted to farm. Namely, he wanted a cow/calf beef operation and that's why he bought the Gilmour farm from Hubert Gilmour. Marble-mouthed Hubie was getting up in age and had long retired from farming, and even from managing the Ross Township dump, where he had been a fixture every dump day for years. His wife had been gone for a while and he wanted to whoop up whatever life he had left, so he sold the farm and moved into Cobden. But, MacKay's adopted him, as they had a way of doing, and he still hung around the farm when it suited everyone. Hubie bought a sharp black Pontiac Grand Prix with some of the proceeds from the farm, and it wasn't unusual to see it parked in MacKay's driveway in front of the garage where he had always parked before. He had the best of both worlds now; his cake and eating it too.
In the herd of beef cows King bought was one mean, crazy, very impulsive old bag of a cow, apt to do anything at any time. Not anything good. Just anything that could get anyone involved hurt or killed. It wasn't very long until we all wanted to see the last of her, whether it was on a truck or on our dinner plates.
As the majority of the cows he bought were in calf, it wasn't long before her time came. When it came, it came with a craziness I had never seen before. Or since. While all the other cows were happy to go about their business having their calves where they belonged in the long, lush grass on the MacKay farm, that crazy critter decided the best way to have her calf was to jump over the fence into our farm, drop the calf, and then jump back into the MacKay farm. She had it in the lowest spot of our farm, just into the second field, in the gully that ran from our place across into MacKay's, where there were hawthornes in the fence. Somehow, to her paranoid, schizophrenic bovine mind, that made sense. It was soon to present a whole kaleidoscope of emergent problems to the human inhabitants of several farms, not just our two.
When I say that cow was bad news, I don't mean just headlines. I mean the whole frickin' Saturday newspaper including the colour comics.
Seemingly shed of as much energy as she was of weight, she just stood at the fence and bawled for the calf. She was for sure a few bales shy of a full mow. MacKays came over to get the calf. She bawled nonstop at the fence. Just when she was going get what we all thought were her wishes; her newborn calf, she dropped the last marble in her bag and turned and high-tailed it towards the back of the farm. I never saw a cow run that fast. Her head was down, her caboose in the air, and her tail straight up with that "I'm a complete nutbag!" signature kink in the top of it, tassel unfurled like a banner in the breeze.
As I watched her disappear towards the back road at an incredible rate, I thought, "That's the craziest cow I've ever seen in my life...". I was only 17 at the time, but, as any farm kid will tell you, living on a farm for your entire life, by 17 years old, you'll have seen more than your fair share of crazy crap, and the majority of it animal related.
The prospect of going after a cow that crazy was not an appealing one, lemme tell ya. But, just saying, "Not my cow/not my problem" is not the conduct of a Good Neighbour, and we now all good and well knew we were in for a Rodeo.
So on our side was Dad, Cory, and me. On the Mackay side was King and Scott and Rodney, and two of King's hired men, Brett and Bradley McCumber. And Bradley's smokin' hawt, freckle-faced, doe-eyed girlfriend. She wasn't much help at any time, but she was a darn sight better to look at than the rapidly disappearing rump of that crazy cow.
Cory and I were used to running after cattle, so we sprang to it in an instant. We were over the fence and into a sprint after her without Dad having to tell us to. It was readily apparent to us that this was a challenge we had never been faced with. She was GONE WITH THE WIND. She ran with so much power that clods of dirt and grass seemingly hovered in the air above her in a continuous cloud from all of her hooves. That was, for the astoundingly short time she remained in view.
Tired out from calving my foot. She was just getting started.
There was a distant but still loud 'SKREECH!' as she barreled straight through the fence at the back of the farm. That would have been painful for any other cow but at the blind speed she was making in her bezerk blitz to the back road and in her (lack of a) frame of mind, she likely never noticed. Or it just made her crazier. That would only be a very remote possibility with any other cow, but a distinct one with her. She was already all on nutz, so shake up the bag a little bit and see what you get...
Once out on the back road, it would have looked like the Autobahn to her after the farm and its tall, late summer grass, soft clay, and rocky outcroppings, so she really put the leather to it and was gone. By the time Cory and I got to the back of the farm and scrambled over the fence and onto the road, there was only her dust left hanging in the air over the hill. And her hard peeling tracks in the gravel. MAN, could that cow ever move! She was an Olympian Gold sprinter. And a true blue Marathon champion as well. We're talkin' Energizer Bunny combined with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. A Jackalope with horns, hooves, anna bag fulla milk.
Remember the cow that jumped over the moon? She must have had a calf, and we were now foolishly trying to catch it.
The back road, or the Blind Line, as it is formally known, was all fenced and gated, except for the front of the Cole farm. As Cory and I were running up the hill towards our Back Place, she had already turned in the long Cole driveway nearly a mile away and was running up the farm. Her dust had already settled before we got there. Bradley's big white old boat of a car blew by us with him and Brett and his main squeeze by his side. They went past the Cole place thinking that bonkers bovine was in the hills behind the Whytenburg and Oattes properties. She wasn't. As Cory and I wheezed it to the front of the Cole farm, her tracks disappeared from the gravel. She'd turned in there for a change of fast-paced scenery. Bradley and Brett came barreling back knowing they just had to have caught up to her by now at the speed they were going or she'd given them the slip.
As we were running in the Cole farm, she was running out. She hit the barnyard and turned around. Yeah. Towards us. The notion that 17 and 15 short years was all that was going to be allotted to us quickly ran through our minds as she hotfooted it straight towards us, head down and hindquarters high. And that looney tunes tail higher still. We were in the wide open and, if she wanted her deranged way with us, she was going to get it. We each just had to hope she hated one more than the other, and not equally, so we could get away. Me, preferably.
Oh, alright: truth be told I probably would have gotten myself kilt to give Cory a chance to get away but I'll nivver admit to it again. Nivver, I say!
All the while running after a cow that crazy the thought was what do we do when we catch her? IF we catch her. You can wear down a crazy animal on a tractor, in a truck, or on an ATV, but on foot? Fat chance. The problem is, at that juncture in time, their idea of wearing us down is a Whole Different Kettle of Fish compared to our idea of wearing them down.
Brett and Bradley coming in the driveway in their big 'ol black-wheeled white clunker of a 4 door car probably saved our gooses. Mad As A Hatter turned 90 degrees off the driveway and headed across the open hay field for the bush towards Claude Oattes' dry cow pasture farm. All along that bush was a shiny, straight, beautiful, tight as a guitar string, brand spanking new Page wire fence and fresh cedar posts. There wasn't even grass growing around the posts yet. Cory and I quickly looked at each other in grim resignation of what was sure to come and then back to the spectacle at hand.
With another 'SKREECH!' that pierced the otherwise quiet and formerly peaceful summer country air, almost half a farm away she blew a cow-sized hole through that beautiful, brand new fence like it wasn't even there and was now crashing headlong through the bush.
That crazy cow just wouldn't quit.
After seeing what she was more than capable of our biggest fear outside of our personal safety was her turning around again. We only hoped she wouldn't turn back because we knew she'd never have the common sense or the common courtesy to go back through the hole she just made. As sure as the grass is green she'd just punch another big one right through those wonderful folks' brand new fence and all we could do was watch her do it. Or hear it happen.
Trying to keep her moving from that new construction we either ran through her more than ample hole or jumped the fence itself and kept after her. I forget. We just wanted her away from that beautiful new fence. I also forgot to say it had been a hot, and somewhat muggy late summer's day and running all out through tall grass, on soft ground, over fences, and up long hills in loose gravel had us half dead from overheating. But when we got into that bush, while we did find it cooler in the shade, the humidity in there just shot through the roof and with it came the bugs, because the ground had standing water everywhere. We sloshed and squelched our stumbling way after her over roots and stumps and downed young trees that didn't cut it in being an obstacle for her. If there was a tree in her way when she came, it wasn't now. Yet another muffled 'SKREECH! through the bush told us she was now in the SE part of Claude's farm, and back in the open again while we were falling further behind in the bush.
King and Dad's shouts from out on the road in King's dark green old warhorse of a 1978 Chev 3/4 ton truck told us to call off the chase. "We'll git 'er another day, lads!" Cowtrol Central had spoken. Call off the pursuit and let the raider go. Battle weary, we throttled down out of War Emergency Power and pulled our shot up warbirds back into regular flying formation.
Sorry - that was the memory of the heat and hummididity talking. King always said, "hummididity", so I might as well too. He also called Mennonites "Menn-yun-ites". He had a lingo all his own.
Anyway, King thought that nasty old cuss would settle down in Claude's dry Holstein cow herd, and we could get her another day. I was too tired to bother telling him then, but I was busy that day. Whatever day that happened to be.
We gladly turned perpendicular from our chase and slogged it out to the road and climbed in to the back of King's waiting truck with Rodney and Scott. They were completely unruffled sitting back there and hadn't even broken a sweat, even though it was their cow. Scott in particular stood out in this escapade in his crisp, spotless polo shirt, and not a hair out of place. Cory and I, on the other hand, were totally drenched in sweat, still swatting biting bugs of all name and description off of us, and were absolutely filthy from blundering through the muddy, swampy bush. They looked kind of bemused at us, at how dumb us country bumpkins were to be running after a crazy cow - especially someone else's - in this heat. The inescapable reality of farm life was soon going to rear its ugly head - and mightily - over and upon and all through their unsuspecting lives. Boy oh boy... They soon found themselves hot and sweaty and dirty and smelling like a manure pile on a regular basis as well, whether they liked it or not. Their trials by fire were coming too. Lots of them.
While King and Dad talked, although quite a mess, Cory and I were standing there strong and fit and none the worse for wear for our run and grinning at each other after our impromptu adventure. We relished a physical challenge. King looked us up and down like inspecting a couple of draft foals at the fall fair, and said to Dad, "That's a fine pair of boys you've got there, Johnny". He always called Dad, "Johnny". Dad thanked him and replied that only I was his son, but Cory was like another one to him anyway. Dad DAD-ED. That's all there was to it. That was who he was and what he did.
The most important thing to do next was to let Claude know that there was a completely crazy cow loose in his herd so he wouldn't be caught unawares. Unfortunately, somehow that didn't happen. When Claude went into his open barn the next morning to feed his cows some grain, that crazy cow was in there and went after him. She got him down and trampled him, and he was only able to save himself by pulling himself under a partition gate away from her. She almost surely would have killed him. Claude spent two weeks on the couch recuperating, unable to do anything. We just felt terrible about it all. He was a great neighbour. Thankfully he recovered and was able to get back to work.
I normally love almost all animals, but I do have a limit, and when that limit is hit, well, all I can say is that's the limit. That crazy cow was definitely the limit for me. If someone picked up a 30-30 and shot that good fer nuthin' ol' bagga bones between the eyes I'd have a smile on my face before she hit the ground.
The calamity of that caper still wasn't over. King had his boys or Brett & Bradley set the calf back over the fence and bedded him down in the tall grass. They didn't mark where they put him. King ran over and killed the calf the next morning with his truck. Not one in those early days to accept responsibility for his actions, he blamed Dad for the loss of his calf and wanted Dad to reimburse him for it. Dad wasn't easily perturbed or intimidated, and, while he felt sorry King lost his calf, he also let him know:
- it wasn't our fault his cow was crazy
- it wasn't our fault his crazy cow jumped over our fence and had its calf there
- it wasn't our fault his crazy cow jumped back over our fence and left its calf there
- it wasn't our fault his crazy cow then took off like the Hounds of the Baskervilles for parts unknown
- it wasn't our fault his calf was set back over the fence and not marked or taken to the barn
- and it wasn't our fault King drove his own truck over it on his own property.
Comments
Post a Comment