Uh... You Seen My Bulls?

After a late night last night and having a little trouble getting serious about the day this morning.... the phone rings. It's my Uncle up at the farm.

Uncle: What are you doin'?

Me: Drinking coffee. You?

U: Checking the cows.

Me: Everything good?

U: Not really... I don't know. What color are the ear tags on the 2 Angus bulls that are running with the main herd?

Me: *Arranging thoughts on the fly in my head that would make this last question relevant to a reasonable answer* White.... why?

U: They're yellow. The ones on the 2 Angus bulls with the cows are Yellow. I don't think that they're our bulls.

Me: Did the neighbor turn some cattle in on his side of the fence?

U: Yeah.

Me: Crap.

U: What do you want to do?

Me: Where are our 2 bulls? Is our other bull out there with the cows?

U: I don't know where our bulls are, I guess over on the neighbor. The other bull is still with the herd.

Me: So you think our bulls went one way and his bulls went the other?

U: I think so.



Now none of this really surprises me 'cause I've seen some pretty weird things happen with cows over the years and the possibility that our bulls and the neighbors bulls changed places is plausible... not real likely, but it could happen.

So it's raining again, and I ain't chasing cows/bulls/moose in the rain. So I just tell him if everything seems to be stabilized with all the cattle playing musical chairs I'm just gonna wait it out til the rain ends.

An hour later the phone rings again.


U: The cows are all up in the corner of the field by the gate.

Me: You wanna go ahead and move across the road to the south pasture and just get 'em away from the neighbors herd?

U: Might be best.

Me: Ain't no way we're gonna be able to separate bulls without getting 'em up to the barn where we can gate 'em. Let's do it.


So I burn up to the farm and the move across the road to new pasture goes pretty smooth... hotter than hell and 20 times wetter, but smooth.

While the cows come into the new pasture I see one of the neighbors heifers mixed in with our herd and then here comes the 2 Angus bulls with the "yellow" tags. I'm giving 'em a pretty good looking over... a REAL good looking over. We get all done and I drive the Mule over to where my uncle is standing.


Me: Uh... those are OUR bulls.

U: No. You think so? Really?

Me: Uh huh. Ours.


Now take into consideration that the numbers on the tags are long gone. The farm and home store sold me a real cute disappearing ink marker to write on cattle tags. There's a small batch of tags that we just kinda guess at what the numbers are until we run the cattle thru the barn again to re-tag those with bad tags. The 2 bulls in question are wearing tags written on with joke ink.

My uncle still not believing me wants proof.


Me: Okay... the smaller one of the 2 bulls will have a little blue spot on his left eye.

U: *perking up 'cause he knows he's right*

We drive over to the smaller of the 2 bulls and what do you know... a little blue spot on his left eyeball.

U: Well I'll be danged.

Me: So...

U: They needed new pasture anyhow.

Me: Yeah.

U: So what's up with the Yellow tags?

Me: I think they just turned a little yellow in the sun, they're the same tags.

U: Boy they're yellow.


So... there you go. No bulls were traded. No bulls were misplaced. One heifer was gained. (ain't figured that one out yet... but I don't ponder things like that too long, it hurts my head if I try to logic out cows) and everybody got moved to new pasture and is now happy as a cow can be.


TA freakin' DA!





Played to a real nice crowd last night at the county fair... I'll throw up some more pics on the next post.







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