Sunday started out as a typical day, but swiftly took a turn for the bizarre immediately after church.
I arrived home with my teenage son in the car, as Mr. Caffeinated had driven separately to take care of some church business. Upon arriving home, I found the driveway gate shut. We never shut the gate, so this was a bit of a puzzler. Looking through the gate we could see a black cow - not ours; this year's steers are both brown - standing a few feet behind the gate, nose to nose through the fence with one of the steers.
I asked said son to please open the gate, let me through, and then close it again before hopping back into the car. Said operation accomplished, I pulled forward a few feet to get a better look at the cow.
Except - it wasn't a cow. It was a bull.
Fully intact in the, er, bull-equipment department, if you catch my drift.
He hadn't been at all twitchy when my son was just a couple feet away, maneuvering the gate, so I wasn't immediately alarmed, although rather puzzled.
We pulled up to the house, parked in the garage, and I checked my phone. Turns out, according to the texts, that a friend of ours who is also friends with the previous owners of our house, had driven by on her way home from church, saw the bull in the road, assumed it was our animal, and shooed it into the driveway and closed the gate to keep it put. She'd tried to call, but my phone was silenced because (a) Sunday, and (b) having animals loose isn't a common occurrence at our house. When we bought the place, we replaced all of the fencing and the gates, and while the previous owners often had steers get out, we've never had an animal make it as far as the road.
The whole thing struck my as insanely funny, but there were still Things that would Need To Be Done About It. I decided that the first item on the agenda was to call the sheriff's office and let them know that I was (a) in possession of a bull that wasn't mine, (b) it wasn't my fault, and (c) I'd be happy to have the owner come and get it, but I had no clue as to whom that might be. I suspect that the 9-1-1 dispatchers are probably not accustomed to having people call up announcing that they have bulls in their driveway, while simultaneously giggling and sober.
Cattle rustling is still illegal, so I wanted to head off any potential allegations before they got made. Dispatch transferred me to the sheriff, who informed me that he had neither the deputies nor the spoons to deal with the situation, and that unless someone got freed up on his end, I was on my own. Well, ok then.
Next, I called Mr. Caffienated and formed a Strategy. The bull was calmly and happily meandering up the driveway, sampling the grass and trampling the occasional iris while calmly inspecting the place. On the other side of the fence, our steers were galloping up and down the pasture, trumpeting to the world that those were their irises, and if anyone was going to go around sampling or stomping on them, it ought to be their privilege. I wasn't particularly wild about having a bull roaming around my landscaping, so we decided to try tempting him into the field on the other side of the driveway.
At first, the bull was only minimally interested in this idea. He observed us setting up a trough and filling it with water. He gazed complacently as we filled a feeder with hay. He accepted a handful of hay as his rightful due from Mr. Caffeinated, but wasn't inclined to exert himself by walking towards him for any additional helpings.
Now, when our steers are young, we often will herd them across the driveway with a chute created with that flimsy orange plastic fencing that you see at construction sites. Since they're small and usually following our older animals who are used to the routine, they learn that when the orange stuff goes up, they're going to walk between it to Luscious New Grass, and they get pretty excited about the whole thing. And they don't try to go through the fencing. Mr. Caffeinated suggested that we set up the chute for the bull. I wasn't too sure it would work because he'd never seen it before, but agreed that we could give it a try.
I'm not sure if it was simply the power of suggestion, or if it was because the steers went absolutely berserk when we set it up, but after some very gentle coaxing and slow infringement on his 6-foot comfortable social-distancing space, he finally decided that the pasture did look mighty tasty and moseyed in the gate. Once he was 15 feet or inside the field, Mr. Caffeinated grabbed the gate and swung it closed.
Except. That was the gate that had the problems with the hinges last fall, for which repairs had been delayed because "it will be fine; we can fix it later". So, while the one side of the gate swung shut, the other side swung off, leaving the whole thing in a very surprised Mr. Caffeinated's hands.
So, I held the gate - which wasn't fastened to anything - in the hole, while Mr. Caffeinated rocketed up to the garage to grab tools to fix it. It only took about five minutes, and then we could step back and breathe a bit.
I called my friend and let her know what she'd actually turned loose on my Sunday. She was mildly surprised, but not particularly concerned. I guess she figured that (a) we could handle it, and (b) better me than her.
Fast forward a couple of hours. The steers were still kicking up hissy fits every so often, because that was supposed to be Their Grass and He was eating it! A couple of neighbors were consulted, but they didn't have any bulls missing, and at that point we were out of English-speaking neighbors. I contacted a student's mom who has dairy connections, and sorted out a Plan B and Plan C for if the owner didn't show up. We got on with our day.
Closer to evening, a vehicle pulled slowly in to our driveway. In it were two guys - father and adult son, I think - and the son's wife. Between their limited English and our even more limited Spanish, plus some charades, we established that this was their bull, we weren't trying to hijack it, but were simply keeping it contained until he was discovered, and that we'd be happy for them to take him home. The owner announced that he was going to rope him, and I promptly said I'd be happy to watch.
The bull wasn't particularly thrilled about this idea, and led him on a merry chase up and down the field a few times. Eventually, they did get a rope around his neck, and the roper wrapped it around his waist - at which point the bull decided it was a good idea to go for another couple of laps. I'm not entirely certain that the guy didn't go completely airborne, but he did make a few astonishing leaps while being hauled downfield by the bull.
Eventually they got a second rope on the bull, at which point he decided to just stop and not move. To my surprise, the wife then picked up the other end of the rope and whacked him across the behind with it! I was anticipating another round of the zoomies, but the bull just gave her the stink eye and took a couple of steps. She whacked him again. They slowly progressed up the field this way, and made it out the gate and to the back of the car.
I asked if they had a trailer. "No; we'll walk him home."
All righty, then.
They wrapped one rope around the hitch on the back of the car, put it into gear at about a half a mile an hour, and slowly made their way down the driveway and out into the road.
Ten minutes later, they were progressing down the road at about the same speed. Traffic had backed up the hill about a half mile behind them. Mr. Caffeinated commented, "I'd never have known there were that many people that drove down Swan on a Sunday if they hadn't decided to take that bull home on foot." Another friend commented, "It's not everybody that takes a bull out on a leash for a walk."
Truth.
This has given me a new perspective on defining the urgency of situations around here. As in, "is it 'A-Bull-In-The-Driveway' Important? Or can it wait?"
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