Reasonably Educated Bumpkins

In a perfect world, animals -- both domestic and wild -- would stay where we want them. In the real world, it rarely works that way.

I was reminded of this fact this morning as I scanned the paper, and read of a bear in Tahoe who had crossed the line into Human World way too far, and one too many times. Because the bear threatened a sheriff's deputy the bear had to be put down. (It could well be the same bear who keeps coming to my friend Margaret's Tahoe cabin door and breathing on the glass, and if so she won't have to worry about nose prints anymore.)

Good fences make good neighbors, they say, and it's probably true, especially when cows are behind those fences. When first we moved to the dairy that became our family home and compound (the Pushing Water Ranch, as I have named it), the 70 acres of barns and pasture were compartmentalized by barbed wire fences. Over time, wooden posts rot, wire sags, cows scratch, and soon there's a tempting stretch of fence just begging a curious cow to step across. In the middle of the night. For no apparent reason. "Cows out!" became an all-too frequent rallying cry, and there was no arguing -- time to pull on shoes (boots in the winter), bathrobes, whatever you got. Cows on the road won't wait until morning, and cows on the neighbor's lawn would be frowned upon, but BULL in with the neighbor's heifers is a real no-no. Trudge, trudge trudge, out to chase cows.

One rainy winter pre-dawn morning I was awakened by a loud "GLOWRPH!" which is a sound not easily reproduced in print. Instantly the outside patio light went on, and I staggered from my bed to the window to see my mother outside in her nightgown, in the rain, carrying a long pole. It took a minute for my junior high brain to understand that a cow had fallen into the pool, and Mom was herding it toward the steps with the pool brush. (The "GLOWRPH!" came from the cow, not from my mother, by the way.)

Time to go chase cows.

Dad was dressing and in his boots, and there was no way around this, so out into the rain we went to find and herd the cows. This was big news later that day at my school, let me tell you.

We've had many of these stories over the years: the opossum who fell into a trash can, the cow who fell into a septic tank, Dad's rabbits who staged a jailbreak so often that he finally just let them run free, the bantam rooster who kept falling in the pool and riding around on the floating pool sweep (he miscalculated once and that ended that) . . . animals just won't stay where you put them.

After a few successful years of dairying Dad had sturdy iron fences built to replace all but a very few of the ratty old barbed wire (that's pronounced "bob wahr") fences. Good management, good neighbor relations. Now, on the rare occasion that cows get out, it's usually because someone left the gate open, but you can't solve for stupidity.