D. K. Wall 0:00
He stood in the middle of my front yard, chewing as if he didn't have a care in the world. He certainly ignored my frantic arm waving and demands that he vacate the premises. Thus began my adventures with yet another trespassing bovine. Not a small, friendly dairy cow you might see on a milk carton. He was a black Angus, a four-legged monolith with a hide the color of a moonless night. A massive boulder of a head set atop rippling muscles, more than a half ton of intimidating bulk. His eyes, deep pools of shadow, stared as if he held a deep philosophical disappointment in my life choices. Every ounce of his body, and that was a lot of ounces, oozed contempt at my suggestion he needed to go home. I can't say I was surprised. My history of convincing cattle to do anything is, to put it mildly, abysmal. For many years, I lived next door to a sprawling ranch. Getting home meant driving through the middle of it, where the only traffic jams were composed entirely of livestock. The horses weren't too bad. A firm word, a pat on the neck or rump, with a snort of derision they would part just enough for me to slip my Jeep through their midst. Unless they lingered, which meant they served as decoys. Many times I would catch literal horse thieves treating my always-windowless jeep as a rolling treasure chest. I'd have to shoo the pilferer away as it tried to inspect my backseat for loose groceries or forgotten treasures. But cattle? Cattle are a different beast entirely. They are masters of stubborn inertia. Their primary skills are staring, chewing, and completing the digestive process with a stinky splat. Convincing one to move is like trying to reason with a brick wall. After one embarrassing incident, where I might have tried to negotiate with a hunk of steak to go through a gate for entirely too long, I realized my limits. From that point on, I simply retreated, pulled out my phone, and called the ranch barn. Sure, it was shameful to admit my shortcomings, but soon enough, a pair of ranch hands would appear to corral the critter back on its rightful side of the fence. As impressive as the wranglers were at their guiding duties, I have to admit to being disappointed in their appearance. Wizened veterans with sun-scorched skin didn't appear riding their trusty steeds, cowboy hats perched on their heads, cutting and guiding their targets back onto the ranch with deft hoof work. Oh, no, they were young, with ball caps touting John Deere or Dale Earnhardt atop ATVs spewing exhaust. Not exactly the image of John Wayne, but they were skilled at their jobs, certainly more talented than I was in bovine guidance. A few moments after my call that morning, I heard the familiar roar of a pair of ATVs approaching. I expected my usual cavalry to appear in a dust cloud, but it wasn't the young guns. As the ATVs crested the hill, I saw the riders were none other than the legends themselves, Miss Betsy and Mr. King. Now, anyone familiar with the ranch knows these two, and knows my monikers are invented to weakly disguise their real identities. Miss Betsy, in her seventies, had grown up on the land and raised her family there. Mr. King, of a similar, if unclarified, age, leased pasture land from Miss Betsy for his cattle every summer. They both were royalty in our rural haven, experts in the ways of animals, people I admired and were, frankly, intimidated by. To see them arrive personally, to handle a wayward steer, was like having the Joint Chiefs of Staff show up to deal with a rogue squirrel. I was both awed and cowed, excuse the pun. They pulled up in front of my house, sized up the situation with the calm, practiced eyes of people who had forgotten more about livestock than I would ever know, and formed a plan with swift efficiency. Miss Betsy, astride her ATV with a bag of feed strapped to the back, would be the lure, leading the lone grazer with the siren song of a midday snack. As the master herder, Mr. King would walk behind to discourage any detours. To my surprise, I wasn't to witness the event from the safety of my house. They assigned me a surgically precise role, gatekeeper. Open the gate to let the youngster through, then close it before any of the rest of the herd got a similar notion to explore the wilds. With no other cattle in sight, the assignment seemed foolproof, an intern-level task. I felt a surge of misplaced confidence. Miss Betsy kicked her motorized buggy into low gear, passing the hefty animal just close enough to entice him. He lifted his head and took one long sniff of the processed oats. In a lumbering move, fitting his bulk, he swung his head to and fro between my rows of azaleas and the enticing feed and declared my landscaping the far more appealing diet. Strike one. Not deterred, Mr. King called out Plan B. In motion before I could ask details, he let out a whoop and delivered a firm slap to the rain-slicked rump of the beast to get it moving. It worked. If, by worked, you mean a 1,500-pound freight train of steak and fury, snorting its displeasure at the treatment, took off in a trot directly toward me. With dawning horror, I realized I had forgotten to clarify a few details. Open gate, closed gate, sure, got that, but exactly where was I supposed to stand that wasn't in the trample zone? Somehow, I didn't expect Senor Sirloin to dutifully march through the opening without exacting revenge on someone for his indignities. Too late to contemplate, because Mr. King hollered, "Open the gate!" I did, fumbling with a coil of barbed wire looped over a fence post as a pair of inky black eyes locked onto mine. Then, and only then, did I receive my first instruction, beyond a simple open or close. Miss Betsy, from her ATV, parked a safe distance away, shouted, Crouch down, be small. It seemed counterintuitive to make myself smaller in the path of a stampeding animal, but she was the expert. I dutifully crumpled behind the tallest mound of weeds I could find. What are you doing, Mr. King bellowed? He needs to be visible to guide him. Stand up. I shot back up, arms out, feeling like a very confused scarecrow. 'No, he'll spook him,' Miss Betsy cried. 'Down.' Down I went. 'Up!' yelled Mr. King. 'Down!' bellowed Miss Betsy. Up, down, visible, invisible, for what felt like an eternity, I bounced up and down in a panicked game of human whack-a-mole. The massive beast slowed, its head cocked. I don't know if a steer can look amused, but this one came pretty close. It watched my bizarre, flailing dance for a moment, and then perhaps, out of sheer pity or profound confusion, abandoned its charge and trotted meekly through the open gate. l stood there panting as Miss Betsy drove through behind it. Finally, my two commanders were in perfect agreement. Close the gate, they said in unison. I did. Thus ended my career as a cattle wrangler. Not that my assistance was ever requested again, I hung up my spurs. Even the cattle agreed with that decision.
