Daily Archives: October 30, 2016
I Would Have Ask For More Money . . .
If I’d Known I Was Going to Have to Chase Cows and Dodge a Brahma Bull.
This is Sunday nights blog for 10/30/16. I couldn’t get it posted last night from the gate, so here it is now.
The gate I’m on now is slow, very slow, with only two trucks coming in yesterday to drop off one of them, and then other truck leaving with both drivers. And tonight two trucks left about 6pm that had come in on the day shift. And that will probably be it for tonight.
But what I do have is lots and lots of cows. And one VERY big Brahma bull. This gate, which is right off the highway, is in the middle of a cow pasture, a well-populated cow pasture. And yesterday evening about 6:15 I saw movement out my right window. Suddenly I realized I was in the middle of a large herd. And right about then is when the earthquake hit.
At least that’s what I thought it was until I looked back over my left shoulder and out that window. The VERY large Brahma bull had walked between the guard shack and the potty trailer and then decided that this would be the perfect place to scratch his itch.
But finally the bull wandered off just in time for one of the motion sensor alarms to start going off intermittently . Looking out the door I could see the reason why. There were several cows down by the sensor setting it off. Apparently unlike my Mighty Mule alarms that only sense metal, these also sense beef.
Our sensors are kind of kludged together, being a large orange traffic cone with 3 foot stake jammed in the top. The sensor itself is zip-tied to the top of the stake. Crude, but effective.
Unless of course a cow decides it’s her favorite new play toy. This became apparent when the alarm started up again with a constant beeping. Sticking my head out the door, I saw this.
One of the cows was kicking and head-butting the sensor cone, knocking it around the roadway. After listening to the beeping, I decided to just walk down the road, run the cow off, and get the cone back.
But as I passed the the generator trailer and then my truck, I heard a loud ‘SNORT’ off to my right. And there about twenty feet away, stood Mr. Bull, who again snorted and then pawed the ground a couple of times while looking right at me.
Now having come out on the losing end of bull-me interaction when I was a vet assistant back in high school, I decided the cow could play with the cone all she wanted.
A while later I saw the bull mosey pass the shack and head off in the other direction out across the field. Thinking this might be a good time to retrieve the cone, I walked out of the shack only to see there were now 3 cows fighting over the cone. So figuring the bull was now off in the other direction doing . . . well, bull stuff, I headed down to get the cone back. But it didn’t work this time either.
As I got within about 50 feet of the cows, one of them, like a dog with a big bone, grabbed the stick in its mouth and took off down the road, being chased by the other 2 cows. Or maybe they were running interference and blocking for her.
At this point I don’t know any more.
At first I was thinking I would just follow the cow down the road until she got tired and dropped the cone. But realizing this would put me out in the open, with Mr. Bull somewhere back behind me, I jumped in the truck and took off after the cow, who was now several hundred yards away.
But the cow didn’t seem to want to relinquish her new toy, so I ended up driving back and forth across the road and out into the pasture, trying to herd her back toward the shack. Finally she gave up, dropped the cone, and took off across the field. Probably to tell Mr. Bull how mean I’d been to her.
But when I got back to the shack, I found more havoc had been wreaked. Both the Sign-In boards had been knocked over along the marking cones.
Well, at least they LEFT the cones this time.
In last Tuesday’s blog, Extra Fluffy, I commented how standards have changed in how women’s weight is perceived. Referring to both a 1959 Perry Mason, with bikini models, and the early 60’s Beach Party movies, I noted how today these women would be considered at least ‘chubby’, if not plain overweight, according to today’s standards.
And it’s still happening today.
This is Miss Iceland, Arna Ýr Jónsdóttir.
She’s was competing in the Miss Grand International pageant in Las Vegas when she was told by the pageant staff that she had no chance of winning because she was too fat, and her shoulders were too broad.
So saying, “Miss Grand International doesn’t deserve my face, body, personality or heart.”, she quit in disgust.
Good for her.
Wrapping up, we had a lot of nice comments, both on the blog and on Facebook, about the neat robot Halloween costume that his Uncle Chris made for Landon.
What Brandi didn’t realize until later was that the big yellow button in the middle of suit is actually a ‘Fart’ button. When you press it, it lights up and makes a ‘fart’ noise.
Who knew robots could fart?
I guess it’s a guy thing.
Thought for the Day:
The easy way is usually mined.
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