Driving Miss Daisy

The beginnings of today's adventure trace back to early last week, when a big bad bull from the local gang broke into my neighbor Sue's ranch. He plowed right through Sue's new barbed wire fence in pursuit of his true love, Daisy, on the other side. Sue's husband fixed the damaged fence, unwittingly trapping the bull inside.

Remember Daisy? She is quite the looker.



On Thursday, the bull's owner tried to extricate his bull from Sue's ranch by cutting the fence and making a temporary wire gate. He managed to chase his bull off of Sue's property, but Daisy and Sue's young steer, Lucero, slipped out as well. Sue was very agitated, to say the least. She called last night to ask if Lyle and I would help her and her daughter round up Daisy and Lucero and move them back home.

What were we thinking???

Two middle-aged cowgirl wannabes and a 9-year-old are going to ride their no-cow-experience horses out into miles of chest-high grass in the middle of snake season, locate an at-large heifer and steer, and drive them back home through a hole in the fence?

Off we went.




Those are the last of the pictures. It got pretty busy as soon as we turned off the road.

We managed to find Lucero about three quarter's of a mile from the hole in the fence. And we actually drove him down the fence line to within a quarter mile of the opening. But he took advantage of us, broke away, and headed back to where we started – over and over and over and over again. About that time, the bull's owner comes driving across the pasture in his truck. He was heading over to work on the fence that he cut, and he brought a couple of genuine cowboys with him, who were on horseback, driving Miss Daisy and her boyfriend back home. Whoohoo! Reinforcements who knew what they were doing!

Between the five of us, we were able to drive Miss Daisy, Lucero, and the big bad bull through the opening in the fence and onto Sue's ranch. Then all we had to do was drive the big bad bull back out. Turned out that was the easy part. As soon as we put a little pressure on the bull from behind, he leapt over the fence! (Think cow jumping over the moon). I had no idea they could do that!

So Sue, her daughter and I earned our cowgirl stripes today. I was very proud of us all, but particularly proud of Lyle. Once he figured out what we were trying to do, he played right along and seemed to enjoy it.

Seeing the bull leap over the fence makes me think that Lyle and I will have many more cow-working opportunities in our future. I just hope they happen on weekends when I haven't been bucking hay. 'Cause now I'm really tired.