Saturday, September 24, 2016

Counting cows


I was dog tired last night, I was so tired I went to bed early after letting Mouse outside.  I was hardly able to keep my eyes open as I trudged up the stairs to our nice firm bed.  I got undressed and promptly flopped into bed and fell asleep.  It has been a long week at work and I have been burning the candle at both ends.  Next thing I know I kinda hear the phone ring, its late and no one calls us unless you are a solicitor or survey company.  We ignore both those types of calls and they don't usually call this late.  I try and ignore it and fall back asleep.  I hear Annmarie talking on the phone as I attempt to burrow down under the covers.  Next thing I know Annmarie is coming into the bedroom and turning on the lights at 2300!  Its late and she tells me that the neighbors up the road just called because our cows are out in the road.  This sucks as it means I must get out of bed, get dressed and go out into the cold!  We get dressed and Mouse is bouncing all over the hallway as he knows something is up.  We put on his reflective vest and his clip on light before heading out.  I holler for Zeke multiple times and get no response.  So I go outside and stand on the bridge and holler for Zeke, no answer.
I am hardly awake, much less functioning so Annmarie tells me to take the pickup down to the other end of the farm and block off the road so we can push the cows back towards the house.  She and Mouse were going to walk up the bottom pasture and we would meet at the cows, wherever they were. This plan would have worked better if she was walking with Zeke.  In the middle of the night, using the dog by blinky light location only is tricky at best but near impossible with a puppy.  I drove around and found all the cows out on the road eyeing the fence keeping them out of the neighbors alfalfa field.  I shooed them out of the road then herded them toward the lower pasture with the pickup by driving through the stubble of the wheat field.  I finally spotted Annmarie and Mouse coming up the bottom.  By the time Annmarie made it to me she was covered in dust, her eyeglasses were crooked and her face vaguely resembled pigpen's appearance.  She told me that Mouse spooked the horses in the barn lot and Mika ran over her pushing her down into the loose dirt.  We pushed the cows into the upper pasture.  Our leasee has just disced the entire filed and it is very loose dirt.  We ended up tossing Mouse into the cab and driving down the field.  The cows disappeared into the dark but they sounded like they were ahead of us.  They got out by pushing on the gate.  I had it chained shut but the chain was held onto the wooden post by two fencing staples.  I need the chain to go all the way around the post and chain into itself so the bull cannot push it apart.  We drove down to the barn and tossed out a couple of bales of hay.  The entire ride back, after discovering the gate, was consumed with wondering where the three boy sheep were at.
We could hear the cows coming so thought they were still in the bottom pasture, nope they had gotten back out into the wheat field.  So I had to open the gate for them while Annmarie tossed out some hay in the barn lot.  Nope, the cows went down to the lower pasture and waited for me to open the gate.  I will have to feed them later.  It was finally time to go to bed. I will not be counting sheep in my dream.  They are on their own.  Hopefully, we can spread the word and someone will spot them.  As I went out onto the breeze porch to kennel the puppy, there was Zeke!  He had crawled into his kennel and gone to sleep, a wise old dog move.  




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