Cow vs. RZR

Now, this is a story all about how
the RZR almost got flipped, turned upside down.
I'd like to take a minute, so just sit right there.
I'll tell you how that cow came out of nowhere.

It was a warm, April day last year when my best friend, Andrea, invited me to come to to ride her fiancé's RZR with her. Naturally, I had to rush out to her house, because riding buggies through mud holes, down dirt roads, and into the great wide wilderness of Chambers county is always a great time.

We decided to leave around lunchtime, and she informed me that while the breaks were "a little sketchy," we'd be just fine since there was little to no traffic.

(I know what you're thinking, "Wow y'all are dumb." Well, maybe we are, but let me tell my story.)

We rode miles and miles of backroads jamming out to everything from Outkast to Merle Haggard. No issues, no traffic, nothing but good times with my best amigo. Hours of joy, laughter, and horribly off-key singing.

With any back road in Alabama, you always run the risk of encountering wildlife; this day was no exception. Shortly after our departure, we were running at speeds approximately equivalent to Danica Patrick, and in hindsight, it probably was a bad idea, but I digress. As we reached a chokepoint on one of the roads, Rae Sremmurd's "Powerglide" blaring at a deafening volume, an Angus heifer began loping across our path. Andrea tried the breaks, but they were useless, so we did the only thing we could do: Andrea floored it while I clutched the O.S. handle until my knuckles turned white.

The heifer was approaching her side as we barely scraped by, and I was certain we were about to be flipped by the cow. That cow never slowed up, and to this day I have no idea how we didn't get rammed by her. But one thing I do know, not a drop of our drinks were spilled that day.

Watermelon Woes

One night, in a completely dumb, spur of the moment decision. While my friend, Sam, and I were waiting on our horses to finish eating, we were chatting and happened to see some round objects in the neighboring cow pasture. It was dark outside, and we couldn't really tell what they were, but after much speculation, I decided they were wild watermelons. Sam was not convinced, so I jumped the barbed wire fence to go grab one. It was extremely dark, like the kind of night where the moon doesn't shine, and the stars are all dull.

I walked confidently into the pasture, I didn't hear the cows, and it was a huge, forty-acre pasture. They were bound to be anywhere but here right? Wrong. I was wrong. The thing about Angus cattle is most of them are solid black or close to it. And, if you remember, I told you it was a dark night. As I knelt down to grab a "watermelon" I heard a rustling in the grass. As I picked up the melon I locked eyes with what I can only describe as one of hell's demons. Apparently, the cows had all decided to bed down right next to the main entrance of the cow pasture and the watermelon patch was right near several calves.

I'm not saying I am fast, but I am saying I hit a whole new gear as I was trucking it out of that pasture with a mob of angry cows clambering up to meet me. They were bellowing, and I couldn't see any of them. I launched over the saggy part of the barbed wire, tore my jeans, but never dropped that watermelon. Upon further inspection, my injuries were minor, and the melon was a honeydew. I lost the bet, and my dignity that night.

Flying Bull

I work on a small cow-calf operation in central Alabama. Periodically, we have to work all the cows. Working cows consists of sending all the cows, calves, and bulls into a holding pen, sending them one by one into the chute, and vaccinating and doctoring each animal. It's a pretty straight-forward process, and while these are pretty docile cows, there's always one that makes the whole day a touch and goes situation.

On this lovely, spring afternoon, the bull in the Highway Pasture, Dually, came into the holding pen with his herd, docile and quiet as he always does. Things were moving smoothly, and we had about half the cows done. No issues, moving at record time, everything was ship shape. Dually even decided he was going to lie down and catch a quick nap while we worked We didn't bother him, but soon we had almost run out of cows and calves and we needed to get him through the chute.

Well, Dually decided that he, in fact, did not want to go through the chute. Instead, he began trotting angrily around the holding pen sending us sorters into a frenzy. Never play chicken with a bull. Dually ran to the opposite side of the pen, and then bam. Two thousand pounds of bull went flying over the five-foot gate, and into the pasture.