YOUR COWS ARE OUT...

I am in the mood to relate a farm story today. Now, there is a little 'secret meaning' to the phrase "your cows are out" which does not have anything to do with zippers. It has everything to do with living on a farm and having the phone ring with a neighbor informing you that indeed, your REAL cows are REALLY OUT, meaning out of their corral.

I hated that news. It meant that these drooling, wide-eyed beasts that were my mom and dad's livlihood were out galloping around all over who-knows-where, trampling on who-knows-who's gardens. The whole family would be called into action whether day or night, freezing or sweltering, to bring the cows home. We never had a huge amount of cows because our farm was just a small one. Usually there were between six and fifteen cows at a time living in two separate corrals. The corrals were ramshackle, and sometimes a cow leaning against the fence to reach tender grass on the other side could bend the fence down low enough to step over. I can see my uncle Thurm now with his bad knee, failing his arms and speaking Thurman-ese (expletives included) and trying to trot faster than the cows who were eyeing him suspiciously as they jogged away with a new-found sense of freedom. Sometimes we were out in our pajamas with the legs stuffed into hastily donned boots, slipping and sliding in mud and muck. It's pretty hard to run very fast in those circumstances, I tell you.

When I grew older, my horse came in handy a time or two. Usually by the time I caught the horse and jumped aboard, the cows were ambling home thanks to kind neighbors and friends who would invariably join the chase, but I do remember some occasional 'cowgirl moments' when I would be able to coax my horse to gallop past the escapees to head them off and turn them around.

The funny thing, too that often happened is that we would get the boneheaded bovines to the gate of the corral and they would stop dead, eyes bulging, and look at the corral as if they had never seen it before in their lives, and that certain death awaited if they allowed themselves to set a hoof inside the gate. They would do a dance to the left, to the right, and any where they could at that last moment of recapture. I always had a little fear tugging in my stomach too, because often my dad's cows weren't dehorned and they would lower their heads and take a swipe with those horns. A sigh of relief from all involved would mark the last recapture and slamming of the gate.

So now you know how a farmgirl feels about the phrase "YOUR COWS ARE OUT..."