Saturday Morning Cartoons

Remember Saturday mornings as a kid, sitting around in your pajamas, watching as Wile E. Coyote chased the roadrunner and never quite succeeded? That's how our Saturday morning went - minus the dynamite, thank goodness.

I got a call at 7:04 Saturday morning, saying that there was a bull and a calf out on the road by the Ninnescah Pasture. From the description, I didn't think the bull was ours. (We don't have red ear tags.) But the calf had a yellow ear tag, so I thought he might be an escapee from our pasture. The first cartoon-worthy episode was trying to get ahold of Randy. We live in the never-never-land of cell phone reception. On the other hand, it's a little hard to answer a phone that is not on your person. (That would never happen, right, Randy?)

After 45 minutes and three tries to reach him, we were finally on our way, with 4-wheeler locked and loaded. And, yes, indeed: There a bull and a calf were out on the road. As predicted, the bull was not ours, but the calf was. We decided to take care of the calf first. He wanted to get back in with his friends, and, probably more importantly, his own personal milk machine known as Mom. But he wouldn't cross the fence. (It obviously didn't stop him the first time!)

We swung open the pasture gate, and Randy unloaded the 4-wheeler. (You can see the calf has now acted like the roadrunner and sprinted down the road. If you look closely, he's that little black speck in the distance of the photo.)

I leave jobs like unloading 4-wheelers to Randy. I don't want to be like Wile E. Coyote and fall off a cliff - or the backend of a pickup on a 4-wheeler.

Then, the chase was on. My job was to help turn the escapee into the pasture and not let him get past me. 

Since I was there, why not take a few photos of my own Saturday morning version of the Coyote and the Roadrunner?

Mission accomplished ... at least Part 1 before the commercial break. 

The bull was our neighbor's, but since we were there and it was the neighborly thing to do, we were going to try to get him corralled. The plan was to open the gate on his pasture and drive the bull in. Kind of like the Coyote's grand plans, that didn't go so well.

Boys will be boys. The neighbor's bull and one of our bulls wanted to be THE ladies' man in the neighborhood, and they had the testosterone to prove it. They were butting heads through our fence. Randy got Keith's bull moving in the right direction, and away from the fence. But he wouldn't turn, no matter how much "Hey, hey, HEYING!" I did. As the 2,000-pound beast barreled toward me, I decided I didn't want to become the flattened pancake creature on Saturday morning cartoons, so I stepped aside. I'm usually pretty brave, but I try not to be stupid.

After several attempts to get the neighbor's bull into his own pasture, he leaped through our fence so that he could continue the "discussion" about superiority with our bull. 

You will have to take my word for it: There is not time to take photos when standing in front of a running bull ... unless you are in Pamplona, Spain, I guess. But I'm not that crazy.

So, while Randy loaded the 4-wheeler, I did what I do best and looked for pretty things to make the day seem better.

Randy dropped me off at home, and then went back to fix the fence wiped out by the bull's barreling his way into our pasture.

In this episode of Saturday morning comedy of errors, nobody got squished. Randy didn't break his arm, which, by the way, did happen with a run-in with a bull last summer. Nothing was harmed ... except for a fence. There's always an upside, if you look hard enough.

Later ... more photos from an evening excursion to the Ninnnesah Pasture. They will be more pastoral, as a pasture should be, right?