Daily Archives: November 3, 2015

Chicken and Cows . . .

Well, our ‘Mostly Cloudy’ day turned out to be ‘All Cloudy’ and pretty ‘leaky’ too, with a very fine, almost misty, rain falling most of the day, and of course, no sun to be seen at all.

Of course, there’s always tomorrow . . . which is the same ‘Mostly Cloudy’ forecast.

The gate traffic stays pretty consistent with 55 to 60 vehicles a day, with the same six crew, and a few supervisors coming through, and the rest are the water tankers hauling out the flowback water they’re removing from the three wells.

And it’s a lot of water. At 9000 gallons per trip, and42 tankers today, that’s almost 380,000 gallons a day. And for the last seven days since they started the Flowback, that’s over 2.6 million gallons, one tanker at a time.

A few weeks ago, our landowner came by to let us know that he was releasing about 50 head of cows (and two donkeys) into our area, and to let the truckers know. So we regularly have anywhere from one or two cows, to the whole herd just wander by.

Cows Passng By

They usually stop and stare for a few minutes and then move on.

But yesterday afternoon was something a little different. I heard a lot of commotion and looking up, saw a pretty good size Black Angus cow running full speed up the road toward me, followed closely by Billy, the landowner’s son, in his red pickup.

As soon as the cow passed our rig, she circled back around behind us, trying to head back in the direction she’d just come. The red pickup skidded to a halt, backed up, and tried to cut her off, as she came back around. This back and forth went on for a while, with Billy steadily driving the cow on down the road. But every now and then, the cow would make a dash for freedom, cut across the pasture, and head back this way.

Finally this ‘traveling circus’ disappeared around the corner down by the pad, and afternoon’s entertainment was over.

When Billy came back through a little later, I told him, “You know, they have horses for that, and they’ll do most of the work for you.” He laughed and said, “Yeah, but I don’t have to feed and water this one.”

Turns out the cow was feeling amorous, and was smitten with a bull right across the road on a neighbor’s land. So smitten in fact, that she kept trying to tear down the fence to get to him. So he had been trying to move her a couple of pastures over, I guess hoping for ‘out of sight, out of mind’.

I told him it probably all depended on how strong his fence was at the new pasture.

For lunch, I made a quick trip into Carthage to pick some Chicken Express. Well, Chicken Express for Jan, and I guess, Fish Express for me.

Jan usually gets the 4 Chicken Tenders with Fried Okra, and I get the 2 Catfish Filets with Fried Okra, and then we split an order of Fries.

Chicken Express Catfish

Their Fried Okra is delicious, but they serve it kind of strange. They give you a small bag of it, and then dump 3 or 4 bags worth just loose in the box. I always wonder why they even bother with the little bags at all.

We also get four pies with our order. Jan gets two Cherry and I get a couple of Apple. These are not to have with our meal. In fact, we always have enough left from our Chicken and Fish for another dinner. No, we normally have these the next couple of mornings for breakfast, or with our coffee later.

One thing I’ve noticed is that, at least here anyway, both Chicken Express and Whataburger have gone back to actually deep fat frying their pies, instead of baking them. Much, much better tasting.

On a related note, the young lady that works the counter at Chicken Express needs to be moonlighting as a trainer down at Whataburger. I mentioned all the problems I have with Whataburger taking my order and getting it correct, but the girl at CE has no problem with my order.

That was our meal today, but yesterday Jan served her famous Nachos.

Jan's Nachos

This is a favorite gate meal of ours, really quick for Jan to fix, and really good to eat. And we have it a lot off the gate too.

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Thought for the Day:

It ain’t over til it’s over
and it ain’t over til I’m out of ammo.

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