Cow Chips: Houdini

Shortly after turning the cows out into the St. George field I was made aware of a problem. I got a phone call about some cows that were out on the other side of the creek from our field. Knowing that I had built fences and being confident in those fences I came to the conclusion that the cows must belong to Shelby who actually had his cows in a field on the other side of the creek. I gave the caller the number of someone who could address the problem and thought that was the end of it. The next day I got a call from Kyle, Shelby’s son who explained that he had been down to take care of the cows and they had gone down a rip rap embankment into our field. (Rip rap is a very steep rock wall used to keep the river in its channel.) Thinking that what he just told me was impossible I went down to investigate. I walked the entire rip rap area; I had not built a fence in this area because I did not think that the cows could get past the rip rap. As I was walking along I could not see anywhere along the length of rip rap where there was evidence that a cow had been. Again, I thought that someone must be mistaken.

The next day I got another phone call from a concerned resident about the cows being across the creek. Again I went to investigate to find nothing. I had Houdini cows that could escape their confines to the other side of the Santa Clara River. So far I could see where they had been snooping around in the dry weeds and dirt on the other side of the creek. This in itself baffled me, why would a cow leave the foliage of the creek bottom and a nice green hay field to graze in the desert. It was obvious that there were cows that had been in the area; I was still not convinced that they were our cows because I still could not find where they were getting out. This all changed the next day when I got a phone call from a very angry lady. The cows had decided that they didn’t like the desert; they didn’t like the creek or even the hay field but instead had been grazing in the yards of several of the homes in the Sunbrook subdivision. I arrived to find the cows still out, this was good, because when I chased them out of the yards they showed me where they were going over the rip rap. They had done significant damage to several yards and left their green calling card cow pies in yards, driveways and streets around the neighborhood.

After getting the cows back where they belong I was left to confront half a dozen angry residents who’s yards had been damaged by the cows. I was glad dad was with me for this, since in reality they are his cows. I found that a little bit of humor helps in a situation like this, these people wanted to know who was going to pay for the damage that was done to their yards. I quipped that I should be charging them for aeration and fertilizer. This helped soften them up until one of the home owners commented about seeing a cow outside her window at about 11 pm. Dad commented that the cows do their best work at night which made everyone laugh. After getting everyone calmed down by explaining that we would take care of the damage they decided that they would call the landscape company that takes care of all of the yards in the subdivision and get an estimate. This was a fortunate thing for me since the landscape company chose to just take care of it as part of their contract. It seems that they did not want other companies coming in and giving any estimates to repair the damage.

I learned several lessons from all of this. First, do not be too quick to jump to conclusions about what is going on. When all of this started I jumped to a conclusion about who owned the cows. Second, a little humor in a difficult situation goes a long way. The angry group of home owners calmed down a lot when I started joking with them about the yard care service that the cows had provided. Third, I learned to take a little bit of time when figuring out how to deal with a particular problem. In this instance, taking the time to try and get some estimates on repairs paid off, the company maintaining the yards did not want to take a chance of another company under bidding them on their yard care contract. This worked out well for me as well as the home owners. Last, I learned once again to never underestimate the cows. They seem to always be doing something that you would not think that they would be able to do.