We got up pretty late the next morning and nobody else was home. Because Silja helped out with the daily chores, we went out to take care of the dogs in the kennel and feed the cows in the small pasture they were in. Before this though we decided to do a bit of herding. Silja managed to get four cows into the round pen
and then Dracu and I went in. Right when we went in she got kicked and she was pretty intimidated by the cows after that. Barked a bit but didn't want to go close. I think the round pen was too small for her and she felt like there was no place to escape if the cows wanted to get her. Silja called her aussie Chippa in to help
give Dracu more confidence and we worked on that for a little bit. After we were finished Silja went to let the other cows we had left in a take pen out.
When she got close to them they leaned against the opposite side on the pen and broke the chain and got out! Lucky for us the take pen was a gate into a bigger pasture of Russ's. But the cattle ran full blast out into it and had disappeared into the bush before we even understood what had happened :O Quickly Silja told me where to stand and left after the cattle with Chippa. My job with Dracu was to make sure the cattle didn't run out of the bush and into the wrong side of the pasture. Because the pasture was very large and covered with thick bush it was hard to tell where the cattle were and we spent a good hour running around in the afternoon heat trying to a) find the cattle and b) get it into the right direction! Finally we got a few cows into the smaller pen they were supposed to be in but Silja came to me with some very bad news. She had seen three escape through the fence into a neighbors pasture and three more were missing and there was an ominous hole in the fence that lead into an other neighbors 1000 acre pasture!!!!! We went to put the dogs away and started looking for the missing cows in the smaller pasture. It was really thick bush and used at some places as a dump. We found an ugly, greenish pond and the neighbors assortment of animals, including a mule and an ostrich but now cows.
At this point we were starting to feel pretty desperate. Missing cows, Russ and his wife both gone for the whole day. We thought of taking the two horses and looking for the cattle on horseback, but as luck usually has it, the saddles were in Russ's trailer that was being fixed in a other town and only Russ had the keys. So all we could do was wander around the pastures looking for the cows in the Texas mid afternoon heat - not exactly what we had planned for the day! Russ's friend came to help us a bit but she could only stay an hour. She did see a glance of the cows in the smaller pasture but they were to railed up to get close to. After she left we spend a good few hours looking for those bloody cows. Silja saw them once but could not get anywhere near in the bush before they took off. Around 5 PM (when we had spent 6 hours outside in the heat) we have up. My arms were full of bloody scratches of pushing me way in the thick bush and we were sweaty, dirty and tired.
We decided to drive into a close-by city for some lunch/dinner. We had Silja's American friend meet us there and ate with gusto. After dinner we shopped a bit and stopped at a local little amusement park and the movies. It was well past midnight when we came back to Russ's and again everybody else was already sleeping. The next morning Silja had to get up early because she was flying back home to Sweden. I got up as well to leave because Russ was expecting company. Not quite sure what to do next, I went into College Station to do some laundry (in a real Laundromat!) and use the Internet in Starbucks. I just wrote on a friends wall on FB that I had been kicked out of my current place for loosing the owners cows (kidding) and a lady I had met first at Melinda May's and then at Nationals wrote to me that I could come stay with her in the same town Russ lived in! Of course I jumped at this offer and was over at her workplace (Jean actually works at the ASCA office!) in a jiffy.
Before this though I had a little accident. I was just driving around College Station when some guy pulled out of a parking lot and hit me in the side! I was pretty shocked by this and pulled over. He came out and we went to look at my car. Of course it was a shady place I stopped at and I could not see any major damage. I got his phone number and said I would call if I needed his information. Stupid me. I was pretty shocked by the whole thing especially since Dracu was in the back of the truck in her crate and I thought he might have hit her! The damage seemed minimal but when I stopped to look at it after I calmed down I noticed it was much bigger than I had first thought. I called the guy the next day and he promised to look up his insurance info and call me back. You can guess twice did he call. I tried calling again but he never answered. So that was that. Apparently I should have had a police rapport anyway for the insurance company but I didn't even think of calling the police over a little fender bender. Not when they are busy solving murders and such (how very Finnish of me to think like this?).
Well next time some ass hits me I know to call the cops, complain about a awful neck pain and milk every penny outta the idiot... And that just might happen because I have had two VERY close calls with idiots pulling in front of me out of nowhere. Stupid people here never walk anywhere so I guess Mama never taught them to look both ways before running in front of moving vehicles.
Anyway, me and Dracu spent four very nice days with Jean and her husband and three aussies. I got a grand tour of the city in a very cool Jeep and learned how to drive a four wheeler! Now that was FUN! We went to agility class with Dracu and had a nice time to rest and relax. It was also fun to go bother Jean at the ASCA office, see all the cool history stuff they have.
On Halloween Jean took me around in her car and we went to see real, live tricker treaters! (Not a invention of Hollywood, they actually exist!) And I ate my first steak in 10 years! It was okay, not something life altering and I doubt I will ever be a huge carnivore but hey, I got it down and didn't feel like puking my guts out so all in all it was pretty cool. We also got a big dinner from this little trailer parked outside a gas station. In my opinion that's kinda like eating food bought out of a trunk of a car but whatever. I tried the ribs and pork chaps and they were okay but me and Jean ended up getting Chinese takeaway.
Oh and if you are wondering what happened to those 6 cows me and Silja lost, well Russ spent two days on horseback looking for them and he did eventually find them. So that was my one (and hopefully only) look at farm life. Left at a farm for too long, I'm sure I would efficiently bring down the whole meat industry of America... :D
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