Welcome Sacramento Bee readers!
Cows are malicious animals. Devious and cunning are just a few characteristics that make up the bovine. Oh sure, they look peaceful and docile as they eat grass and chew their cud, but don't let this fool you, a more clever adversary you will not soon encounter. I know many of their tricks, I have the scars to prove it.
So it came as a shock to me when I went out to gather my cattle and sort the calves to be shipped to the sale yard, that the cows followed behind my four wheeler in an orderly fashion. I brought my saddle just in case it became a little 'western' but I though I might just be able to get them in the corral with the quad. The cows jogged along behind me trying to get at the flake of alfalfa I had on the back of the quad and I led them down the road to the corral.
My wife and and her friends came down the road just as I was putting them in the gate. "That was easy" my wife said.
Don't say that, were not done yet, was my reply.
So with the help of my son and my wife's friends we sorted the cows and small calves back out the gate and had a goose neck trailer load of weaned calves left in the pen.
"That was easy" my wife said once more.
Yea, but were not done yet, I again reminded her.
We put the calves in the trailer and I headed to Galt bound for the Cattleman's Livestock Auction in Galt.
I kept thinking to myself that since the loading and sorting went so smoothly that we were sure to have some calamity happen on the freeways, a flat tire, an accident or the devious cows picking lock on the trailer door to bail out onto highway 99. When we pulled into the auction yard, I couldn't believe nothing had happened.
Surely on the way home through the downtown interchanges with all the freeways jammed with folks coming back from their weekends we would find our disaster. Nope. I did have one jackass in a black Chrysler 300 cut me off and nearly take off my front bumper so he could make his off ramp, but nothing else.
When I made it back to the ranch to pick up my quad I met my wife.
I said, "That went easy"
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This post is being considered for The Sacramento Bee's roundup of regional blogs, which appears Sunday in Forum.
The Sunday newspaper column is limited to less than 800 words. Blog posts included in the column are often cut to fit. No editing is done other than to add ellipses to indicate deleted passages. The blog's main address will appear in The Bee, and the online copy of the article will contain links to the actual blog post.
If you have questions (or you DON'T want your blog post considered for inclusion in the newspaper column), contact me at jhughes@sacbee.com
John Hughes
P.S. Forum editor Gary Reed, who normally trolls the regional blogs for suitable posts, is on vacation.
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