Altivo

Today's adventure began when Gary called me at work, about 11:15, to say that there were five stray cows in our barn. He had shut them in by closing the doors on them, but wondered what to do next. I suggested that he call the county sheriff to report it, in case anyone had already reported missing cows. He was already awaiting the arrival of our horse vet and her assistant for a routine call.

When I got home at 1:00, the cows (bull calves, as it turned out) were inside the round pen, Tess was shut up in her stall (the round pen is usually hers) and the barn doors were opened again which was good as it was 82F outside. Our patient vet and her assistant had been much amused by the situation, and helped him get the cows into the pen once Tess was removed and put into her stall. Gary had called all the neighbors who might know anything, but most of them were not home and only got messages left on their machines. We suspected the goofy neighbors just west of us and did find cow footprints leading onto our land from theirs, but late in the afternoon a call from the second place to the west informed us that the cows probably belonged to the Hispanic folks at the third place to the west. Sure enough, another call soon confirmed that, and told us that "José" was sending riders over to fetch them.

I wasn't too keen on that idea, because it was the height of rush hour and even our rural road was quite busy, but four vaqueros soon showed up to collect the strays. None of them seemed to speak English, but Gary showed them where the cows were and sent them out the back door of the arena so as to avoid tangling them or trapping them between sheep pens. I thought they would stampede onto the road but they didn't. Instead they took a leisurely amble across everyone's front yards and flowers. You can follow the entire sequence of events in photos if you click the thumbnail above and then proceed forward through the images on Flickr.

I suspect the poor calves are destined to be used for cutting horse practice or team roping, and then eventually will end up as hamburger. They definitely looked sad, as the Farmville announcements on Facebook always say about stray cows. I think though, that's because all cows look sad all the time. Could it be that they know more about their fate than we think?