chasing cows (mooo!), healthy exercise, the universe, and everything

Kali

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Fri Sep-24-10 12:47 AM
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chasing cows (mooo!), healthy exercise, the universe, and everything

sorry, this is kind of long and the pictures are kind of a crappy reward for reading it all.

I have been working my way up to walking a couple of miles a day since the early part of August. This is a double effort for me as I am not only a fat lazy ass, but I have that old style cowboy phobia of being on foot.

I usually get up as my youngest son is leaving for work, about a quarter to daylight. The instructions for the small dose of thyroid med I take says to wait an hour before eating and since my sugared, powdered-pseudocreamered morning beverage is the carb equivalent of a meal, I wait that hour for my coffee. This is a change I am not real happy about, but if I go walking that hour gets killed well away from temptation. (although it creates the next problem of getting moving without caffeine, but what the hell it only takes 3 weeks or so to make a habit)

It rained yesterday and it was so humid and wet out this morning I decided to blow off my walk and go back to bed for a little while. The weather is starting to turn so the options of walking at later times is finally arriving. I was just drifting back to sleep when the phone rang. One of my neighbors was on her way to work and saw a little red calf out on the interstate right-of-way. Crap! So much for sleeping. Run around find my shoes, get some water in the radiator of the van, grab the camera just in case I need it for an insurance claim (ewww) and off I go. Get up on the interstate and I start rolling slowly down the shoulder with my emergency flashers going and a Highway Patrol passes me then pulls over and is sort of leading the way. We come upon a small silver car - something kind of new, pulled over about where the calf was seen and he gets out and comes over to chat. We are looking around and here comes a young woman wandering throught he rocks and brush with a kind of strange look on her face, obviously not used to hiking around in rough country. I'm thinking wtf? was she chasing my calf? She just didn't fit the profile AT ALL. Well it turns out she had actually got the baby back through the fence and was now trying to find her laptop. Her lap top? Yes, well she had put it down next to the fence where she saw a hole and now she couldn't remember where that was. There was only about a 1/4 mile worth of fence it could possible be, but it is rough and brushy up there so I offered to take her back to the on-ramp so she could look for it.

Now getting back around requires driving about 2 miles west, crossing the median (illegal!) and going back up to the exit, off, under the highway and back onto the other direction. My van has a 460 in it and the muffler is not really connected to anything anymore. It's still under there, hanging by some chain and bailing wire, but the vehicle impresses people who like a strong rumble if you know what I mean. I bet she had NEVER in her life been in anything like that. It compares well to any third world peasant class bus. Really. I mean there is even hay in the carpet. Fence posts, tools, baling twine, Mexican blankets, garbage I pick up off the land and never get rid of, old jackets - it's worse than a truck because it has a roof so you don't have to remove things "because they will get rained on."

Well we make the circle and she babbles on about being an animal lover and all the usual things that remind me not to make county type life and death jokes or talk in detail about what happens when a semi hits a large animal going 70 mph which also leads into trains, because we deal with those accidents too... but anyway, forgetting my audience here probably has more in common with her than me...

She eventually remembers where she first parked her car to chase the calf and gets out of the van to go look for her computer. I see the calf on the correct side of the fence and another older animal with it and think it all looks ok although I didn't think that was its mother. It was interesting because I just automatically look for landmarks when I am out on the land, but she was clueless. And to be fair - the opposite happens when I get in a big structure like a hospital or a large auditorium or concert venue, or a shopping mall. I never have a clue where I am, always get turned around. All the shops look the same to me and the air is so still - can't get my bearings. Hate malls!

She wanders around a little then finds the laptop so I take her on to her car and she is sitting there in the passenger seat saying something while I glance in the rear-view mirror to watch for traffic. What do I see? That little red fucker trot back out onto the pavement and then across the median onto the other direction side! I say "uh oh there he goes" she starts asking what should we do? and I tell her she is going to get out and I am going to go back around and put it on through that side's fence as that is obviously where it was trying to go originally. There are several tunnels for them to cross under and sometimes a cow will go through too far a head of baby and the calf misses the tunnel or is lagging with some other animals and when the cow gets to the other side she will bawl for baby. If it is not close to the tunnel the calf will hear that across the road instead of through the passageway and will then walk the fence trying to get to her. If it doesn't get with some other animals going under or finds a hole or is just small enough, it will crawl through the fence. This isn't a big deal anywhere except on an interstate as it will usually just get to its mama as quickly as possible. When older things get out on a road it is a lot more difficult to deal with because they freak out and panic. Don't know were they want to go. Babies go to mamas. Especially if you back off and LET them. They can panic too if you start trying to herd them around. Probably why my helper got that one through the wrong fence.

So around I go again to make sure little red gets through that side. See him just standing on the shoulder as it is a bit of a drop off on that side. So I turn the van off and get out to shoo him on down and he does exactly what I just described above. Freaks out and runs back onto the road. A semi almost gets him and then he veers back to the shoulder. I go back to the van to move it up a bit and...it is dead. Crap. I sit there watching as somebody drives by in a small car and doesn't even slow down. Squeeze my eyes shut. Peek out of right eye and both car and calf are "racing" down the off ramp. Ok at least he will be down there and not on the interstate itself. So I quickly call 911 and let them know the situation - calf is back out and I am dead on the road, will start walking and try to keep calf out of traffic if I can. They will send officer back out. I gather my camera and phone and lock up the van. (don't want anybody trying to steal my baling twine or old dusty blankets) and head on down the road. Maybe one look back.

Get a little further and there is momma on one side of the fence and dummy just off the shoulder down in the bushes. We startle each other (I thought he was way up further) and he finally jumps through fence to the cow. Off they go in a hurry! Me, I am old and fat and have to go around. The extra 1/2 mile on clear pavement vs. climbing a fence and bushwhacking it an easy decision. Cop shows up and stops to see how it went and I bum a short ride on to the beginning of our road (no shame!). As we pull in past our entry sign we see a work truck and a car parked close together and two people sitting int he car. Love is so wonderful isn't it? I wonder if they are married? To each other. Cop offers to take me on down to the house but I laughed and let hem see the first ruts and bumps. That must have been kind of strange to have a highway patrol vehicle drive up and deposit some fat middle-aged woman at the end of a rarely used dirt road.:rofl:

My walking goal is to get up to 5 miles and as I mentioned I am at two right now. Our road is just about two so the walk back was just about what I have been doing for the last week or so. Kind of nice to "see" this end of the road since most of the time I do the half from the house and back. Some of you may recall the post I did a while back about wading up the canyon. In it I had a picture of "the cement bridge". We have two more bridges on the road. They are about a 1/8 mile apart and are called "the wooden bridges" One is "the first wooden bridge" and the other is called "the other wooden bridge" and it just depends if you are talking about coming or going. Logical minds hate these kinds of imprecisions but it's all in the vocal inflection, you know?

Despite appearances they are quite sturdy. The wood that the tires ride on is kind of rotten but the support boards are good. This is looking back from the way I came (the other bridge is near that oddly shaped cottonwood sticking up) and since I am now on this side looking that way this is the first wooden bridge. See? It's really not that hard to grasp.

Since it rained yesterday there were a few puddles in the road. These are deer tracks. I don't know if it the minerals or what, but lots of animals seem to just love to drink out of dirty road mud puddles. They could have nice clean trough nearby or a fresh, running stream, but they will just mob a road puddle.

Topping the last hill to the house you can see a problem I have. This was about 8:30 or 9, I think and while part of that is cloud shadow, mostly it is from the mountain. For somebody that is really NOT a morning person, it doesn't help that the sun hits the house way after the rest of the world. We have a joke at home when we are up and it seems early (because it's dark) but we need to get going before it gets hot: "It's 12 noon at Dave Hendry's house." (this was a house the husband helped build one summer - no matter what time he started out it was always hot and sunny by the time he got there)

and finally, a gratuitous shot of some cows that I took on yesterday's walk, since that was part of the whole post.