so there i was. standing in a stranger’s backyard—lasso in hand—staring eye to eye with a five hundred pound runaway cow i’ve been sprinting after for the last five minutes. a smile cracks across my face as i realize i have no idea how this is going to end.
this cow, whose escape tactics have quickly earned him the name dr. richard kimble, took me for a test drive around the neighborhood friday after an exhausting week of work. due to some electric fencing hiccups which have since been resolved, the new cow was a little unimpressed with the dangly string all of our cows are so well trained to obey.
upon searching the holding pen he was being kept in, and finding him missing, i alerted holly (wife in the duo that owns the land we farm) in the house for help, and sprinted the five hundred or so feet to the street to make sure he wasn’t there. sixty mile per hour traffic and a spooked half-ton beast make bad company. also, this is the direction he headed in on his first breakout, and if one thing’s certain, cow’s love doing the same thing twice.
i got eyes on him once i reached the roadway. fifty yards away, still on the happy side of the fence, things are looking manageable. this hilariously innocent assessment couldn’t have been more wrong, and a chain of events were set in motion that i will never forget.
the cow was in a light trot along our perimeter fence line. we were in the lower pasture, which has not been grazed all year, and the grass has grown serengeti tall. i was hoping against all hopes that this perimeter fence line maintained structural integrity from where we were, all the way back to the barn, which is where i had wanted to drive him.
no more than fifteen seconds after this hope fluttered through my racing heart i noticed a tree down thirty yards a head. a tree down—down and to the left—crushing the aging fence line. may as well have been a bright red and white exit sign.
at this moment my subconscious considered the options. sprint after him, inevitably provoking him to run away from me, or fall back, hoping his instinct to find the herd will guide him to safe pasture without my intervention. the first thing i saw on the other side of our now cowless pasture was a child’s swingset. a slide, a little ladder, and primary colors. i quickly felt the potential danger and sprinted after richard kimble. the hunt was on.
chasing a running cow through a suburban neighborhood, across driveways, and past dogs, is not something you can really prepare for, or probably understand from reading this post. mid-sprint, i took note that next time this happens i must first sprint to the barn for some cow treats and a bucket, cause out here in the real world i had a very hard time convincing ‘ol dicky kimble i was on his side.
in somebody’s front yard, and with three dogs screaming in the nearby window, kimble stopped running. stopped, without ever taking his eyes off of me, and caught his breath. i did the same, snapping the picture above (he’s in there) and considering my options. the man whose dogs were barking came outside to investigate the commotion. there i was, sweating head to toe, panting, and pointing to the cow with a shushed finger pressed to my lips. he asked if i wanted a rope, which i did. despite not knowing how hard it would be to catch him with a rope, or how dangerously fast he would be moving whenever i was close enough to strike, it still felt good to have some sort of “tool” at my disposal. i was somehow less helpless.
as you can tell in the photo, the side and back to this property is a large stretch of open woods. i knew for sure that’s not what i wanted, for fear of then being miles away from home base. the other direction was towards home, but also towards a street full of houses. back towards the houses though, i thought maybe i’d find a fence to corner and lasso him (ha, right!). i could tell kimble was thinking about running again, so i slowly circled to his front, cutting off the woods, and instigated another chase.
these sort of shenanigans continued for about twenty minutes. people came out of their houses, ear to ear smiles, some with a camera, some in their underwear, to watch the guy and the cow sprint by. on the fly i instructed a few standerbys how to stand tall, arms out, and cut off possible obvious escape routes. i finally hit a stretch of houses that bordered our property, and everything changed in a moment.
the two of us emerged from the wooded suburban development and found ourselves jogging through a waist high grass field. the chase was over, and we were running together, side by side, and for the first time neither of us seemed concerned about the other. blanketed by the raging high noon sun, a disorienting and overpowering light tunneled my focus to nothing but the most immediate moment—the swishing of the tall grass against our legs—and with this noise so intensely in my focus i became awash with good feelings. out of this spiritual energy emerged the herd, just ahead on the right. kimble and i, calmly in tandem, had returned.
