Carl decided back in January that he would sell the bulls from our little herd of longhorns, so I put an ad on the internet and they were gone! So all we had left was the 2 momma cows and 2 heifers. Then at the end of the month, a man stopped by and asked if we would be interested in selling the rest of the longhorns, so we said, why not? He took the 2 mommas, but left the little mix breed heifer. Over the last few weeks, Carl has built up his herd of 1 little heifer to a total of 8, then Saturday he bought 3 more larger and older cows. One is in the last stage of carrying of calf inside and the other two have just weaned their calves (but they did not sell with their momma) So, we had a few lonely momma cows searching for their calves and doing a lot of bellowing. After we brought them home from the auction, Carl put them out in the large pasture that had held the longhorns and we left for a wedding. From the wedding we went straight to a friends house for a meal and some games. I did not take my phone inside, so when I got in the car to go home that night, I realized that I had 4 missed calls from a local number, but it was unfamiliar to me. the last call came in at 10:20PM and the first one was at 8PM. since I did not know who it was from, I did not want to call them that late at night...................MISTAKE!!!!!
Came on home went to bed, heard the cows still bellowing. Woke up a few times during the night and still heard them bellowing. got up Sunday morning, started getting ready for church, looked outside and it looked like the cows were on the WRONG side of the fence, in our backyard neighbor's yard. Well, needless to say, changed clothes really fast and headed outside to see what was going on. The NEW cows from the large pasture was walking the outside fence of our other pasture where our other cattle were. When we went to try and out them back in, they weren't sure if they wanted to go. they are very mild and gentle cows, but they are big and when they want to go in a certain direction, they go! This was all new territory to them, so the neighbors come out and assisted us. One said they were at her house all night long (next to the forest) and they kept trying to go back behind her house. We finally got the 2 largest ones back in and started looking for the 3rd one. It seemed like I was hearing her from in the woods. We kept calling and calling, but she never appeared. We got in our vehicles and golf carts and started driving all around looking. Didn't ever see her, starting knocking on doors to let people know that we were missing one.
I made some small fliers up and took them to the local convenience store and gave them to some of the neighbors down the road from us. Later that afternoon, someone drove up and said that a black cow had been run over down the road from us. We jumped in the car and took off to see. Finally about 5 miles down the road, we see her, but she did not look like our cow. The one we were missing was really skinny, with pronounced bones showing under the skin because she was so skinny. The cow that had been hit ( and I had no clue as to when) seemed to be a lot larger. Anyway, we decided that it was not ours and came home. Several hours later, there was a knock on the door and a gentlemen asked if we unloaded some cows yesterday and where. He said that someone told him that we were either loading or unloading from here and he wondered if we took them down the road and unloaded them. Then he told me what had happened . he said that our cow totaled his car. OMG and that he had just buried his wife Saturday!!!! I felt sooooooooooooo bad. I thought that it had just happened and she had just now wandered out of the woods.. I asked when and he said Saturday night about 10:00 PM. I told him that I was sure that our cows were still here this morning and we got all but 1 of them back in and that she was still missing. I told him that we had gone down the road to see the dead cow that he had just told me he hit and asked if that was the one and he said yes. He said that he was just coming over the hill going 75 mph and he hit her. He also said that the cow he hit had a sale barn sticker on it!!!! And that it was number 919. "COULD IT BE???" I honestly don't know. I could have sworn that I had seen all 3 of them Sunday morning, but did I? I do know that I never saw all 3 of them at the same time side by side, but we were trying to corner and chase them one at a time, then one would get away from us and go into the woods or behind the neighbor's house..........but it seems like I distinctly remember two of them going Carl's way after we had just gotten one in. It took us so long to get the two back in that we did and we felt like the 3rd had gone into the woods. I stayed outside for almost an hour listening for her. I kept telling Carl that I heard her bellowing from in the woods. He kept driving in the other direction across the road and I I told him "NO", she is in the woods.
So when the gentleman came and said that he had hit the cow the night before, I just knew that it could not have been ours, he said that across from where he had hit her was a pasture of the same kind of cows. He said the took the sale barn sticker to the highway patrol but they told him that nothing ever comes from that. (I think they told him that also because - after much searching on the Internet - the laws in the state of Texas for FM roads, the owner is not responsible nor is the driver responsible for reimbursing the owner of the livestock unless it was totally negligence on either part. (from what I could understand)
BUT wait, there's more.......the man said that he took care of Mother when she was in the hospital before she died and commented that she had a weird sense of humor.............Excuse me, but my Mother had a great sense of humor, nothing weird about it. She was one of the happiest people I have ever known and loved to laugh.
That is the saga of the month for me, so unless the highway patrol knocks on my door sometime in the future.......................................I am still here down on the farm!
The bottom right is the missing skinny minnie!
Here are the part of the rest of the family. We now have 6 black (angus or brangus), 1 white (who knows?), 2 red (mix hereford & red brangus) and 1 red with white face (hereford).
Ginger is top left, which is the one we have had from the beginning, then the two new ones are Coalie, the black one and Candy the brownish red one.
The next new ones are Bessie (red with white face), Blondie (little white one), then Furby (the slick looking black with brown tinges one) and Bossy the other black one and Sissy, the little sick looking one, bottom right.
