Wrestling Cattle
I never quite imagined that I would find myself spending fall break in a small town of 2500 people called Honea Path, SC… wrestling four calves that are 2-3 months old and 150 lbs each. Today was definitely a first for me as far as a lot of experiences go. Where do I start?
Mr. May, Bryan Smith, and I drove to a cattle farm about 30 minutes away in the small town of Laurens, SC. Mr. May was wanting to buy four or five Angus calves to raise on the farm and then sell later as beef cows… so we devoted the afternoon to going and picking them up. In my optimistic ideology, I only imagined us being gone an hour or two. We’d drive up to the farm where there would be four calves waiting to just jump into our truck… and we’d be on our way. That was me being optimistic…
We arrived at the ranch to find a pen of some 30 odd cattle - weighing anywhere from 1000 lbs to 45 lbs. Not quite like I expected. We spent a good half hour deciding which of the calves (amidst the other cattle) we were going to buy. We finally decided on three females and one little bull - all 2-3 months old and weighing between 130 and 160 lbs each.
We spent the next half hour herding the rest of the cattle out of the pen and back into the pasture, while trying to keep the four calves inside the pen. After getting the others out, we finally found the three of us in a rather large pen with four calves… all weighing the same as me (though none of them were as calm as me). I’ll skip the details - I’ve only barely begun the story, and I would hate to lose your attention on something as minor as how we got three 150 lb kicking, female calves and a 150 lb baby bull into the back of our truck.
An hour later (along with a few extra hoof-shaped bruises and mud stains… and $900 poorer than when we arrived), we were finally on the road back to Honea Path. It had been a long afternoon, and we were all ready to be home.
Twenty minutes into the drive home, the little bull decided it had had enough. Our truck bed was covered by a wooden crate to keep the calves in the truck. The fiesty little calf rammed its head against one of the boards of the crate, busted it off, and jumped/fell out of the truck going 50 miles an hour down the highway. I don’t know how it didn’t cause an accident with the number of cars behind us… or how on earth the calf managed to find the stamina to stand back up and run down the middle of the highway and off into a nearby graveyard. Perhaps the work of divine providence?
We realized 100 yards or so down the road that we no longer had the bull. A quick U-turn and a couple hundred yards later, we were chasing after the calf as it ran full-speed through the cemetery and surrounding pastures. We chased after it for a good hour until it finally disappeared into some nearby woods… we never found it. Tired, worn out, dirty, and disappointed - we got back into the truck and drove home… trying to be optimistic and making jokes about how a little bull outran and outsmarted three grown men.
I could finish the story… there’s more to it. I could tell you about how we finally arrived home, dropped off the three calves in the pasture.. and how Gattabout, their horse, galloped after the calves and ran all three of them off. And then how the horse, in his own mindset, decided to take a canter down the road by himself. But I don’t want to bore you. After all, they’re just calves…
Published on 16 Oct 2007 at 7:07 pm.
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