Dusk was warm even by Southern Mississippi standards. The bugs were out with reckless abandon, and our after-work beers were drank at the back of the house, in the shade of the large water oaks.

 

Larry grilled burgers on our little gas grill. The cats milled about. Our next door neighbors, Ryan and Jenny of BaysVille Cattle Co., LLC, were moving their cattle around, a regular occurrence we gave small notice to.

 

Earlier in the day, they had brought one of their large Charolais cows from the pasture across the road back to their property, which borders ours. Cow had declared herself a foster mom to several of the calves with that group, to the point she had become a creepy stalker type. The girl was not happy with being separated from the rest of the herd. She paced the fence along the tree line about 50 yards up from us, mooing agitatedly and being annoying.

 

We all ignored her.

 

As Larry got ready to flip the last burger and I raised my beer to my lips, we heard a brushy, twig-busting crash and turned to see a large white beast almost magically pass through the wire mesh fence. She basically blew through it and came trotting into our yard, bellowing. “Whoa!” I yelled. “Loose cow!”

 

Our yard is entirely fenced in except for the end of the driveway, although fences were apparently not a consideration to Cow. Larry ran to the end of the driveway and took his best defensive lineman stance as Cow debated what her next move should be. Or mooooove. (Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.)

 

Ryan, failing to feel the panic I felt in my heart, laughed as he climbed over the fence. “Well, she just went through that,” he said. I ran to the gate leading into our pasture, opening it to form a sort of funnel that, hopefully, Cow would feel compelled to go into, and get to the other group of cows grazing in our field.

 

Ryan played cutting horse as he and Larry slowly moved Cow down the length of the fence, where she kept checking the integrity of the fencing along the way. Eventually she made it to the gate and much to my relief, decided I wasn’t worth bowling over and went into the pasture.

 

Cow made a bee-line to the road-front fence to moo to her adopted babies across the road. Our fencing is of old-donkey friendly strength, not really maternal-cow fortified. I was a little worried about her plowing through the way she did through the other fence. Eventually, though, the sun went down and Cow seemed to accept her fate.

 

I’ve learned by sheer moo volume whether a cow is on the right side of the fence or not. At 10:30 that night, as Larry was dozing on the couch and I was getting ready to roust him up so we could go to bed, I heard a loud, resonating moo from the front of the house.

 

In my gut, I knew where she was. For a second, I thought maybe I would just go to bed and forget I’d heard anything. But I couldn’t. I opened the front door and flipped on the porch light.

 

There she stood, lovely in the moonlight. She blinked her big cow eyes at me, stretched her neck, and gave a long, soulful moo, then headed out of the yard and down the road.

 

Larry, groggy, put on some shoes and headed out the door. I grabbed a headlamp, threw on some boots and went into the barn. I wasn’t sure what to do – grab a grain bucket? grab a lead rope? would Cow even lead? pretend I was a calf? what if she kept running down towards the main road?

 

I texted then called Ryan, but got no response. Cow had run down the length of the evil fence keeping her apart from her beloved foster calves, Larry in warm if not hot pursuit.

 

I grabbed a lead and stood in the barn being indecisive until Larry made his way back. Cow had disappeared into the night – no small feat for a big white cow – but our theory was she found an opportune spot to jump the fence and rejoin her beloved foster calves. At least, that was what we were hoping, as she was nowhere in sight.

 

Then came the fun of, where did she get out?  We walked down the line in our headlamps, trying to watch the ground for snakes, possums, and any other nocturnals that might be inclined to bite us as we bumbled through the wet field. We finally found the spot where Cow made her break – a small section of fence between a gate and large tree that served as a corner post. The barbed wire was a mess, so we trudged back to the barn, loaded a spare 6′ gate on the tractor, and brought it out to serve as a fence panel. We weren’t worried about anyone else in the field trying to bust out, and we doubted Cow would want back in. We did a sufficient job of tying it in place and called it a night.

 

Back in the house, we kicked off our boots and and reached the destination I was shooting for an hour earlier: bed.

 

And the moral of the story is: no matter how sleepy you may be, you can’t ignore the moo outside your door.

 

(Photos by and reprinted courtesy of BaysVille Cattle Co., LLC, my kick ass neighbors.)