A blog about bovine...

My friend has been feeling under the weather lately. Because of this, I have been helping her around the place. Imagine my surprise one morning when I walked out to the chicken yard and found this making a salad bar of the fruit trees in the backyard:

His name is Sammy. He is our neighbor's young long-horn. As it turns out, those horns are great for thrusting into the branches of fruit trees and thrashing branches down.

He had also made an extensive visit to our meager pile of alfalfa hay, making it quite a bit scarcer than it had been the day before. Sammy is no fiend, however, because where ever he went, he left a pie in gratitude for his samplings.

Now, I'm no stranger to farm animals, but I have to admit, my experience has not been in handling meat animals. Horses, dairy animals, chickens, they are all familiar with some sort of working relationship with the person who feeds them. The larger animals learn to be handled, to be led, the smaller ones learn not to be stepped on. I have found that I like this relationship style.

Now, this is where the real problem appeared: getting the large fellow back to his proper pasture.


I decided to try the most obvious approach. I grabbed one of the nearby horse leads, looped it around his head, and cinched it at his neck, and with all the confidence I could feign, I turned and marched towards the pasture...for two feet, where I was stopped by the unbudging steer behind me.

I looked at him. His big moist eyes looked back at me, cast a glance towards the apricot tree, and then slowly returned to me. The meaning was unmistakable, "You're kidding me, right? Leave this dessert bar to return to weeds? Hmm... No."

 

Clearly, this boy had developed a sweet tooth, so the next thing that occurred to me was to take advantage of it. I grabbed a scoop of molasses mash from the horse shed and attempted to coax him back through the gate. After the first nibble he follow a few, painstakingly slow steps. I had made the mistake all the greats make though: Never underestimate your adversary. Apparently, bovine possess the basic mathematical abilities necessary to estimate proportions and understand basic size comparisons. He took a meditative gaze at the two fruit trees, and then a calculating hesitation on my small bowl of mash. 2 trees > 1 handful of grain, and off he went to return to his new found love.

So, I took my own meditative moment and recalled how my friends at the fairgrounds managed their meat animals, and then, remembering multiple techniques, I proceeded to commit consecutive failures. I got behind him (outside of leg length) and made forceful sounding "HetHaHup!" shouts, clapping my hands, stomping my feet and making big, herding motions. He responded with a pitying glance over his shoulder and continued his plans. I slapped his rump. He flicked his tail. I tugged on his ear and tried several different commands. He shook my hand off like a fly that tickled him. I took a hold of his horn and attempted to lead him back to his pen. He sighed, and I could almost swear I caught him rolling his eyes at me.  I made horse noises at him, I called him mean names, I called him nice names, but nothing I did even earned his focused attention. Finally, as I leaned against the fence, exasperated and pondering, my eyes fell on the hose.

And then I tried a little experiment. As it turns out, while Sammy will tolerate a slap on the rump, a tug on the ear, insults to his personal existence as well as to the cow that bore him, Sammy absolutely cannot tolerate cold showers.

There is something guiltily funny in seeing a longhorn skip hastily back to his pasture with all the scurry of a startled rabbit. Especially if said longhorn just spent the last 30 minutes unbudgingly outside of his pen.

And this was one of those random things that happen in my unusually boring life.

I have now learned that grabbing a bull by the horns is not always as effective as ambling after him with a hose full spray ahead.

Thanks for reading.

Whatever you do...

If you go to O'ahu, Hawaii, and you get a chance, go to the botanical forest.  Do it, it's beautiful.

If you go to the rainforest, by all means, stop and read the signs.

If you stop and read all the signs, make sure you follow the ones pointing you to the waterfall.

If you head towards the waterfall, make sure you stop and appreciate the plants

This is not the waterfall, it's just on the way

But you'll get to the waterfall shortly after the paradise lua, and they are in no way linked...

 

And if you have decided to walk out to the waterfall, definitely swim out to the base of it

The water is a bit chilly at first, but by the time you get to the base, it is really nice.

If you decide to go to O'ahu and visit the botanical forest, and walk the paths, and read the signs, and admire the plants, and bypass the Paradise lua and find the waterfall, and swim to the base of the waterfall and walk back, by all means, do it, it will be great!

Whatever you do, though-and this is very important!- WHATEVER you do, DON'T forget the BUG REPELLANT!

 

This photo was taken a few days after the bites were bit, and they were less angry that day.  I was bit 21 times!  Laura... well, she stopped counting after she reached 25.  They itched horribly. I had flashback memories of what the height of my chickenpox felt like.  We used a CVS anti-itch spray(active ingredient: benadryl, I think), benadryl name brand ointment, ice, AfterBite ointment, and finally-in an act of total desperation- Biofreeze(that would be the stronger, icier, and hotter cousin of IcyHot intended for muscle pain).  As my cousin-in-law, Patrick, put it after using Biofreeze on his bug bite, "That feels...better...  well, not so much better...but different.  It burns."  At that point, for Laura and I, the burning was more tolerable, and the temporary numbness was well worth the burning consequences.

Hawaii was fun. I really enjoyed the botanical forest and the waterfall.  The moral of this story? Well, there are actually two.  1) Whatever you do, don't forget the bug spray.  And 2) If you do, well... Biofreeze burns, and sometimes burning is preferable to itching.

Thanks for reading.

The Wind Hole...

Things have a way of happening.  As my acupuncturist has said, "It seems to me, you are always having an adventure!" That could be partially my fault. I do have the tendency to approach life in a haphazard sort of way.  Sometimes, however, it really just is that these things just have a way of stalking me.  Fortunately, while my stories tend to entail extremes, so far, they have also always included survival, and they usually include a dash of irony.

Monday night, for example, the street light under which I had parked my car went out.  This was only a small occurrence, until an opportunistic person happened by my car sitting in the dark corner of a parking lot, in a secluded area.  This person broke into my car by smashing my rear, driver's side window.

Let me explain something: I drive a 1997 Ford escort. I believe it was a company car before I had it, because it has the bare minimum appliances.  It has an FM radio... and you cannot even remove the FM radio to upgrade it to something with a CD player (or a cassette player, please?). If the manual says "item optional" we can safely assume that my car does not have it.  My car also has a dent in the rear of the trunk, and a scuff on the side. The fabric ceiling is slowly sagging towards the seats.  It is filthy.  No one in their right mind would look at my car and think: Wow, I could really make bank by breaking into that!

Guess what this opportunistic person stole.  He left the DC Talk, Chris Rice, KJ-52, Chris Tomlin CDs on the floor.  He left to gym towel and the Apples-to-Apples.  He even left the blue-tooth ear piece, and the emergency $20.  Yes, that was really everything that was of any value in my car.  This panicked person rummaged my glove box, stole the change from my ash tray, and my unfinished sewing project.  Let me just say this, I'm a little ticked about the sewing project.  It was a project I had created without a pattern, and it had taken me about 7 hours to get where I was with it.  It was about 2 hours from being finished, and it was going to be featured on this blog, eventually.  As sad as I am about having to start from scratch with that project, I have to laugh when I think about the person making a mad dash away from my car, finally stopping to inspect the pile of fabric which I can only assume he expected to be a purse, and realizing that not only is there nothing in it, it doesn't even have finished seams or a zipper yet.

So, my friends and I went to In N Out, where I had my favorite In N Out meal, with a root beer float. Merida graciously allowed me to sleep on her floor that evening (I was not in town), and Rachel took me to buy a temporary window repair kit (AKA a plastic bag and duct tape).  I had to retape it  5 minutes into my drive home, because the plastic ripped out and it started to rain, which resulted in me using the entire roll of duct tape to repair the plastic. After the plastic was repaired, it stopped raining.  The 107 mile drive home was really long this time!  Did you know that the English word for "window" came from the contraction of the words "wind hole."  As it turns out, without the glass, a window really does become a wind hole.

I am glad to say that the window is now repaired, just before the storm clouds began creeping into Bakersfield.  Hurrah for not being rained on! Hurrah for not having to listen to the raging plastic as I drive! Hurrah for quick repairs and new windows.

So, this could have been far worse.  I am thankful that nothing of great value was taken, and that they did not slash my seats after realizing there was nothing of value in it. I am thankful that I am in a position to fix the window without calculating which meals to miss next month. Sometimes things happen. I am glad they happened in a way that didn't hurt too badly.

Dear opportunistic, over-zealous craft thief:
    I hope you enjoy the $1.50 you found in the ash tray. Please know that it cost me $135 to replace the window... next time, please just ask, and I'll take you to lunch at a nearby food place, which will cost way more than $1.50.  I do think, however, that it was a little spiteful to keep the unfinished project rather than throwing it in the nearby bushes where I could have recovered it.  If you need help finishing it, make sure you sew the zipper in between the shell and the lining, sewing all 3 layers at once, so it will be pretty inside and out, and choose a durable strap material so that purse snatchers will have a more difficult time taking it from you. Also, I forgot to sew the outer pocket closed...have fun with that, you'll need to hand stitch it.

Happy Easter, craft snatcher.  I hope you can find a more legal and beneficial way to solve your financial problems. Jesus loves you.
Sincerely,

   The girl with a new window, and a trip to the fabric store on the to-do list again.