He is the youngest of our herd and the only male…

And he scares me to death.

He is so sweet and so friendly and so big!  Not as big as a typical Charolais bull, they grow to be huge.  No Lucky wasn’t so lucky there….he was castrated young and suffered complications; but because of the love of his previous owners he came to live with us versus going to market.  We are vegetarians; so our cows have a home for life.

But what Lucky lacks in size, he more than makes up for in spirit.  He has so much life and vitality; that sometimes he runs just for the sheer pleasure of it-hind legs kicking up in the air, back humped up, head tossing this way and that- looks like a bull ready to charge.  And he usually greets me this way.  Which is all well and good’ as long as he and I have a fence to separate us.

This past week my husband and oldest son, Michael- decided to move the herd into the back paddock of our farm.  That is the same paddock that my younger son, Mark and I use to walk on.  Mark has autism and a seizure disorder.  He sees the world differently so being amongst all these gentle giants doesn’t faze him.

Me on the other hand…not so much.  There was a time when I felt the same way.  I’d get in the middle of the ‘girls’ as we refer to them and not give it a second thought.  But there was this one day when I was taking a walk listening to music on my Walkman’ when I felt the earth start to rumble.

I turned; saw our herd headed my way.  At that time we had sixteen cows and a bull that we called Wooly- he had curly hair and weighed easily over two thousand pounds….and he was leading the pack.

See here’s the thing….whenever we need to move the herd to a different paddock; I am usually the one whose voice they will come to.  Maybe they think of me as their mother or the one who feeds them…I’m not sure why.

So on this particular day when they saw me; they got excited and came charging.  Now if this were to happen when Frank or Michael were out there, it would be no big deal.  They’d just hold up their hands and the cows would back off.

Calm, cool and collected…Not!  I screamed for Michael to help me divert them.  He was in the house on the computer (this is when we had a hard drive) He looked and instead of getting up to help me; he yelled out the window “Run!”

I threw my Walkman down, thinking that they thought I had food and ran like hell to the nearest barbed wire fence to crawl through.  Wooly and the ‘girls’ stopped to smell and inspect the Walkman; giving me a chance to escape.

Legs that had turned to rubber and shaking….I caught my breath on the other side.

Ever since that day whenever I see a cow or young bull coming my way I get a little nervous.

Frank got home from work and I insisted, begged, pleaded, bribed, insisted and insisted again that they move the cows back to the other paddock.

Both Frank and Michael rolled their eyes.  And Mark may have too but he was out in the field walking amongst the herd.

What can I say.   The cows are moved…Lucky and I can talk with a fence between us…just like all good neighbors do…and all is well.