My cattle and your cattle are together and I want mine back! That is what I want to say, but I will try to be a bit more diplomatic and even smile as I state the news. My neighbor is pretty new to this part of the world and I don't know him very well. He doesn't come to my church, hang out at the feed store or the coffee emporium and seems to rush in and out of the post office. He also has an earring and wears those tight-legged pants with little cuffs rolled up. What I am trying to say is that I am dreading the encounter. But I do want my cattle back.
The fence was pushed around and the top two wires tangled up together and who knows what caused that, but the steers were all, every dang one of them, over on the next place. His cattle could have come to our place and I would have been glad to handle the mix-up, return his colored beef to his pasture and not be bothering anyone. I am just not living right!
So I did the barn chores and drove over to the neighbor's house to take the news and ask if we could help sort and take ours home. I did not realize he had a little board corral and not a pen big enough to hold our steers, let alone ours and his. Now, I was thinking of just laying down the fence and driving them all back to my pens; but I wanted to ask if that suited him. Being a good feller is always best.
He came to the door in a little robe, smiled and stepped out on the porch. I introduced myself and explained the problem as he listened and asked if he thought it would be OK if I took them all to our place to sort. He said he would certainly want to be there to see that all his were returned. Shocked me, almost accusing me of rustling cattle, but I kept my head about me and said that would be fine. He said he could be there by one and I said, "Did you say one?"
It was about 7:30 in the morning when the aforementioned conversation took place and I was not gonna wait until one in the afternoon to shake out the cattle. We could be done in about an hour, and I think the neighbor must have seen that look on my face as he stuttered and asked what time I would be sorting.
The offspring showed up with their iron horses, four-wheelers, and we laid the fence down in the corner of the field. It only took about 15 minutes to get the bunch into our pasture and a short time to get them to the house pen. I was running the neighbor through my mind the whole time, wondering why he even came to this part of the country, let alone bought cattle.
It is my opinion, and everyone has one, city folks have the right to buy land and cattle and move to our area if they want to. They can look different, sound different and act different, but it might not be wrong to be different. The little slippers they sometimes wear are not adaptable for sorting cattle but are probably fine for shopping or whatever city fellers do. We are blessed to live this life and, if they want some of it, so be it. And I got my cattle back!
Old Sneaky Snake is out, so step lively!
Bill is the pen name used by the Gravette-area author of this weekly column. Opinions expressed are those of the author.
Editorial on 06/21/2017