A Small Price To Pay

If a family member ever calls us before 7:30 in the morning, I know one of two things: either someone in the family has had a medical emergency or one of our animals is on the loose. Thankfully, when Natalie’s phone rang at 7 AM on Tuesday, it was just the latter.

“A cow is in the middle of Mawmaw’s backyard,” Natalie’s cousin Ashley called to say. Usually, weekday mornings are already chaotic getting everyone ready and out the door, but this turned the mad rush into a five alarm fire.

“A cow is out!” Natalie shouted.

“A cow is out! A cow is out!” Thomas chanted.

“Where is it?” I said.

“Mawmaw’s backyard.” Natalie relayed.

“Oh, lord,” I gulped.

Mawmaw, who lives next door to us, is 87 and nothing seems to rejuvenate her more than when one of my cows gets out and eats her shrubbery. Over the years, I’ve had to replace several high dollar Japanese maples that cows or goats have defoliated, which really eats into my already non-existent profit margins.

Sure enough, a cow was lolling underneath a dogwood tree, in the middle of her backyard. As a testament to my vast experience handling escaped livestock, I had the cow lured with a feed bucket back into the pasture within five minutes. Better yet, Mawmaw had yet to open the blinds of her windows for the day. Best yet, all her shrubbery appeared intact.

“Shew,” I thought, “she’ll never even know the cow got out.”

After a brief investigation, I quickly solved the mystery of how the cow got out. Apparently, I had forgotten to plug the energizer back up when I was working on the fence a few weeks ago. Having the cow back in and the fence back on, I then proceeded back to the mad rush that is getting Thomas and Natalie off to school and myself off to work. I thought I had escaped, unscathed.

It was not to be. Later that evening, when I got home for work and was getting ready to cut the grass, I saw Mawmaw walking determinedly through the yard, toward me. For a woman who rarely leaves her house, this could only mean one thing.

“Stephen, did a cow get out?” she asked.

“Yes, mam, it got out somehow this morning,” I said, “but I got it put right back in. I didn’t think it had a chance to eat any shrubs.”

“No, it didn’t bother the shrubs,” she said, “but I knew one had gotten out.”

“Did Ashley call you, too?” I asked, now truly curious to know how she knew the cow had gotten out.

“No,” she said. “I knew it had gotten out because there is a cow patty on my patio.”

I went to get a shovel and breathed a sigh of relief. Scooping up a cow patty was a small price to pay compared to replacing shrubbery

The offending party.

.