In the field next to us are a few heads of cattle. I've looked at the fence between our land and theirs and was not impressed- it looked like baling twine attached to rotting posts. Turns out it's electric wire that's orange. We've been allowing the brush to grow up between the properties to have as an extra barrier and hoped that the grass there would be enough.
Fast forward to a day at work when my phone rings and it's my husband. He works out of our home and was sitting there when he received a text from a friend:
"when did you get a steer?"
He texts back "we don't have a steer"
"check your field"
He looked out the window and there was the brown one happily eating the grass between the front paddock and the riding ring. Fortunately the horses were in the back paddock. So he phones me
"what do I do?"
I told him which driveway I thought was the one to the farm and told him to go tell them to come and get their steer. When he goes out there's the neighbour - an elderly man weakly waving at the steer. He is a small wiry man without an ounce of fat anywhere. Ed comes over and finds out that our visitor is "Charlie" and that Charlie doesn't listen. It also appears that our neighbour is quite deaf.
The two horses are watching the show completely riveted.
Ed looks at the older, frail looking man and asks if he needs help. Turns out that the answer is 'yes'. So they both wave and shout at Charlie who ignores them totally and goes about the business of grazing. Ed goes and gets one of my lunge whips and waves it. Charlie moves away but decides he's not ready to leave so we walks through our Horseguard fence and into the front paddock. We have a hefty charger on this fence and our meter indicates that it sends up to 13k volts. Charlie is oblivious and goes through the fence.
Ed opens the gate and they both go in the paddock and try to shoo him out of the paddock. After a couple cracks of the whip Charlie decides to leave- out the same way he came in - through the fence again. He then walks through the brush to our neighbour's yard (this people own a couple acres below Charlies owner and beside us). Ed breathes a sigh of relief and thinks about heading in. He then spies Charlies owner heading after Charlie as fast as his legs can carry him which is not fast. He sighs and heads over to help. At this point Charlie has had enough and goes trotting down the road with Ed and his new buddy in hot pursuit. Charlie hangs a sharp left at the second driveway and boots it up the hill. Ed turns to our neighbour and asks 'this is your place right?' the neighbour nods and Ed says goodbye. He said that he heard the man say something about having to get rid of Charlie.
As Ed is telling me this story later I ask how many heads there are next door. Ed says 'there's a cow, a calf and Charlie'. It takes a minute and then the penny drops-
'Wait- were you chasing a bull??'
'what's the difference between a steer and a bull?'
"balls"
"oh, then I guess he was a bull"
so my city born husband was chasing a bull with a whip and no where to dive for cover.
I haven't seen Charlie since so I am assuming that he has been moved on.
and a quick plug for the Horseguard fencing- it didn't snap, it simply stretched enough to let the bull through. Ed tightened it later and you wouldn't know that anything had happened.
We figured that all was good.
Turns out that we were wrong.
to be continued.....
Hey! No cliffhangers allowed!!
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