I'm going to tell you a story about what it's like being a rancher. It's a true story and all the events I'm about to describe happened in a single day.
It started like most fall days: feeding cattle. I started with the bulls but I immediately got the big bale feeder jammed up with hay. Some rice straw had wrapped around one of the rows of blades and plugged it up worse than a Woodstock Porta Potty. Normally I would take care of the problem, but I also had a vet coming to check on Dylan's fair heifer, so my brother got to work on the feed truck. It's a tricky job, removing hay from the blades, and takes a lot of slow movements and caution. My brother isn't known for either, but he executed the job perfectly, until he didn't. For the second time in my life he came up to me and asked, "Will you tell me if this needs stitches?" The first time was a run in with a chainsaw and the answer then was a resounding yes. This time, same answer. Luckily, the vet was still there and so he cleaned up the wound, pulled out his handy-dandy stapler and several clicks later, my brother was wrapped up in hot pink vet wrap and good to go.
You'd think that with that kind of start to the day, the rest should go a lot more smoothly. And it did; until it didn't. We moved a herd of cattle across the road and a few calves got away from their mothers. Stray calves are notorious idiots, cute as they are, and will always run in the opposite direction of the cows. One ran into the neighbors, where it got chased out by their dogs, and then ran, and ran, and ran. The last time we saw it was in the other neighbor's barn lot. Perfect. We drove in on 4-wheelers to scoop it up and, poof, it was gone. After hiking hills, scanning fence lines, and driving ditches, we gave up. That evening, after dark, I decided to go back and look and ta-da, there it was. Brother came down and we made a plan, which immediately blew up in our faces. The calf ran, brother pursued, and I chased on foot. Luckily, my brother got a rope on the calf and I wrestled
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| Sometimes we do stupid stuff, sometimes the cattle do. |
it in the back of my truck. On my way to return the runaway, brother called, which I knew couldn't be with good news. "I rolled the 4-wheeler," he said. By the time I got back to him he had righted the bike and was heading home but by the next morning he couldn't cough or laugh without crying. There's really no point in seeing a doctor for broken ribs, and the vet had long since gone home, so he had to tough it out for a few days.
1 day, 2 wrecks. I'd say that isn't, thankfully, a typical day-in-the-life, but it wasn't surprising either. It's not a job for everyone, but, man, it sure is fun.
