Killer Cows and Clowns...

First of all, it's snowin' again today, more than yesterday. GAH! One of those "you can barely see the road" types of snows, at times. Snapped a picture of the girls eating this morning. No, they didn't get wet and shrink up, I was just too far from 'em for a good picture and the rest of the pics got a snow covered camera lens fouling things up.



Figure I better explain the killer cow reference in my bio, just to get it over with. Over the years I've had many many killer cow and killer bull episodes. A few ending with blood covered injury, most just ending with a very rapid gate climbing or fence hurdling, or running and screaming like a little girl.

A few years ago I had a cow that just sorta "snapped". One day she was all fine and dandy and then Kapow! she was psycho killer cow. Only thing that could have been worse was if she'd had vampire teeth or something. Anyhow, I had her in the barn and when you walked in she'd throw her head up high and put her butt in the corner of her pen, throw dirt with her front foot and just wait for you to get within ten feet of that pen and then WHAM, she'd slam into the gates trying to make your children into ancestors. I kept her in there for a few days, giving her ground corn and alfalfa hopin' that the special treatment would calm her down, when I knew that it wouldn't.

Giving her the corn had turned into an adventure all it's own, I'd worked out a game where I'd fake her out by starting to walk to the pen, she'd slam the gate and re-group for another attack and during the re-grouping is when I'd pour the corn over the gate into the feed box. Sheesh.

So after about a week of this, I decided it was time for the old girl to make a trip to McDonald land and become a happy meal. Now we get to the fun part where I'm actually gonna have get in the same pen with Bessie Dahmler and load her in a trailer, and I gotta be truthful here... I've been "wooled up" more than once by deranged livestock and I don't like it much. I don't care how much money them boys win by riding a bull that's half bovine and half satan, it ain't enough.

Here is where I had a brain storm. I knew a boy at the time, that lived about 30 minutes away that was (you ready?) a professional rodeo clown, plus he had his own livestock trailer too!! So, I call him up. "Larry? This is Jace, I gotta cow in the barn that has gone totally wrong and wants to kill every human being she sees. You interested in coming and gettin' her and hauling her to the butcher plant?" Larry the rodeo clown that lived 30 minutes away was there in 20 minutes with his trailer and a smile on his face.

We walk in the barn and she's back in the corner throwing dirt and shaking her head and doing that warblely deep moo (if you've been around a psycho cow you know the sound) with loads of slobbering. Larry gets on the gate and starts to climb in and I tell him "Larry, really.. she's pretty nuts, watch yourself." Larry still has the same smile on his face that he came with and jumps right in the pen with her.

Near as I could tell she was just simply shocked that any fool would get in the same pen with her and she just locked up. Froze. Un-moving. Un-killerlike. Un-exciting. Larry the rodeo clown says, dripping with sarcasm "Ewwww she's a scary one all right" I was thinking "clown". Then he throws his hat at her. She sniffs it and slobbers on it and stays in the corner. Then Larry did something that ever since I wish I'd had a video camera to document what happened next. He dropped down to his hands and knees and pawed dirt and scampered around on the barn floor.

Evidently this is like an emotional laxative to a frozen psycho cow. She came tee totally 100 percent un glued and made the wildest, head down, bellowing charge I've ever witnessed. Larry side scampered the cow, got on a gate, she ran past him and directly into the trailer and I slammed the door shut.

I dunno if there's a moral to this story or not, if there is I guess it'd be "when you have a personal little rodeo, call in the clowns first thing."