"There's A Steer Coming Down Highway 63"

Sal and I were coming home from Columbia yesterday and just rattling on about the Governor of Alaska and country music and the people you'll see in a WalMart... you know, important stuff. The topic rolled around somehow to my blog (I don't remember how) and I said "I ain't had a good bovine post in awhile".

Here tis.

This one goes back about 3 years ago and involves my buddy Gary (you remember Gary... hauling the outhouse on the tractor, the 10 mile tall tv tower, my co-partner in the junkyard millionaire business.. oh and the one with the flu and I took his picture just 'cause he looked so dang pathetic lol and laughable and he was too weak to hit me with a dirt clod.)



Yeah, THAT Gary. :-)

I'm a firm believer that every grown man needs a buddy that conspires and enables him to fall back to being 15-18 years old. Seriously. Gary and I have done some pretty stupid stuff, laughed until we couldn't breathe, and no one got killed to death.

Okay, back to the story.

Gary had a couple of fat steers that needed to go to the butcher and needed a little help. He'd just had surgery in his throat to get rid of his sleep apnea stuff and I guess they'd removed about 98 percent of his throat parts or something, anyway... he was pretty worthless. He hadn't eaten anything except Ensure for about a week and couldn't talk above a whisper. He calls me up...

G : Hey can you come help me get these 2 steers in the trailer and to the locker?

Me : Sure. I got a screwed up knee that I've got a brace on... but they're pretty calm and we shouldn't have any problems.

So I get over to his place, we hook up the trailer to his truck, load the 2 hunks of ambulatory meat, and off we go. No problemo.

Little did we know at the time, we had also picked up an unwelcome hitch hiker when we loaded the steers. "Fate" Fate was lurking back there in the trailer just waiting to spring himself on us when we least expected it.

And he did.

We get out on highway 63 just north of town at a big fenced in compound of offices and equipment and shops and stuff that MODOT has. We're tooling down the road and I'm in the passenger seat and I lean down just enough to look in the side rearview mirror.

The side door on the trailer has come open.

A steer is standing there at the edge of the doorway with his head sticking out, just watching the world go by like a big ol Basset hound hanging out the window of a Ford truck.

I pause. I look again to make sure I'm seeing what I'm seeing.

I am.

Me: Oh (*& %$^$%#&%!!!! ()*&*^$#@% and (*)%$#%#^ !!!! STOP THE TRUCK!!!!!

Gary: (leaning to see what I'm seeing in the mirror) )(*)#()#)( ^%#$%@$! (*^&^$#@!@# %$#$#!$#!!!!!!!

Now there's really no shoulder to pull off on. Like a little 3 foot wide thing of gravel along the edge of this 2 lane highway. So Gary's on the brakes and I've already got the door open waiting for the truck to slow down enough to bail out (remember the torn up knee lol) and he gets 'er down to about 5 mph and I step out... bad knee windmilling around like a cartoon and just as I did my ever so graceful exit... so did the steer.

He LEAPED out of the trailer door into the grader ditch and picked a direction and commenced to running. I glanced at Gary just waving frantically in the truck cab as I did my hop, swing, skip, hop, swing, skip, hop, swing, skip run after the steer.... directly down the centerline of 63, headed south... screaming bloody murder at the obviously deaf steer.

Now traffic had come to a stop. This is a very busy highway for a 2 lane. I'd guess maybe 40 or 50 cars and trucks were already backed up. The calf was a little confused with his plight and when we got close to an 18 wheeler, he laid on his air horns... I signaled to him that he was number 1 in my book and we switched directions in our pursuit.

Hop, swing, skip, hop, swing, skip... going North now... still down the centerline.

Gary is trying to get the truck and trailer turned around, backed up... anything with more traffic than you can shake a stick at, all of 'em just in a hurry to get where they're going and not much interested in a cripple and a mute chasing livestock down the road.

We get closer to the gateway to the MODOT compound and I yelled at Gary and some guy to head the steer in the gateway. This was a completely fenced place, probably 20 acres or so... but fenced in. We'd have him "trapped" to a degree when we got him in there.

And into the MODOT place he goes.

Meanwhile Gary has got the truck and trailer maneuvered out of the road and into the compound and me and the guy are hoofing thru this place chasing the steer to who the hell knows where. Office doors are swinging open and guys are walking out of garages... everyone has a camera phone it seems and is snapping pictures of us.

Gary has parked the truck and is trying to run along but in his weakened (lol) condition he can't even keep up with me and I'm like a poster child for Unfortunate Orthopedic Disasters. Hop, swing, skip...

We have no clue where we're taking the calf, kinda just hoping for a miracle. We see a huge salt storage building and decide that'd be a good place to try to get him cornered. I'm running. Gary's behind me. There's sand scattered all over the concrete roads in there, kinda like running on ice. Behind me I hear a sound that sounds like someone tossed a liver out of a 5th story window and it lands on the street... then "OOOOFFFFFFFFF".

I turn around and Gary is sprawled out, flat as a pancake. I hollar "You alright?" He gives me the finger... maybe 'cause I'm laughing... maybe 'cause he's rude. I dunno. :-)

He gets the truck and trailer, backs it up to a corner of the building. There's still the other steer in the trailer and that's working for us 'cause he misses his buddy and is mooing for him. I've picked up an 8 foot long 2x4 cause it was the only thing that resembled a cow stick in the whole place, I inch the steer closer and closer and closer to the open rear trailer door. He sticks his head in... I swing the 2x4 as hard as I can, smack him in the butt, it scares him, he jumps in the trailer, Gary slams the door shut.

Ta Da!

So now we just head back home. The steers are all excited and hot and it'll affect the meat, so they go back home until Gary can get 'em scheduled again at the butcher about 2 weeks later.

Eh well, huh?





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