"The Great Cow Caper" or "Romeo and Juliett Cows"

Well the last two days have been frightening worrying about my cow, Bambi. After a long last two weeks of working my first day off was a nice cup of coffee (and a cigarette) on the patio. That was yesterday morning and I found the main gate wide open, fresh tire tracks and no Bambi. But then again, no Bambi footy prints going out the gate either. The ground being soft from the ongoing drizzling rain would've had tell-tale signs of her roaming about if she did so.

There was also fresh tire tracks leaving the pasture (which the boys next door had come and gone a couple of days before, but surely they locked the gate behind them! They promised they had and Jason would have seen it open when he walked past it the day before!)

I immediately went out to look for Bambi, bringing Darla with me. She can usually find her right off when I tell her "Let's go find Bambi!" (That's her baby too!) Well, we walked and hiked and roamed the 80 acres, in the cold drizzling rain. Found fresh footprints (I mean hoofprints) and followed until the trail disappeared. Calling and calling..feet soaked, cold and wet, still no Bambi. I bottle fed her since her mom died a week after she was born. Her birthday is April 7, 2008, that's when I became her momma (Darla was Aunt Darla).

By the end of the day I had changed clothes 4 times, walked for miles, checked ravines, ponds, any muddy spot she could have gotten bogged down in, filed a "missing cow" report with the sheriff's department, called auction houses, checked for down fences all across these 80 acres. No sign of my baby. All I could think was that cattle rustlers got her. Oh yes! That's alive and thriving more than ever these days especially! A $500 cow (she's priceless by my standards!) would be worth the effort and it's easy to sell a cow with no proof of ownership!
When Jason got home he checked the fences again and found two places she could've gotten through. One was cut by hunters, the other place I've been meaning to fix better. Joe Flowers (shown above) very nice man that has fixed the fence in the past. I met up with him this morning and he said, "Oh yeah, your cow's just fine! She's with the herd and I fed her this morning." I started bawling finally knowing she was okay.
He took me on his "Gator" back to the herd, Darla running alongside us having a blast, and when I saw the herd there was Bambi just hanging out in the middle of them! I gave her a great big hug and scratching but she sure seemed to like being there more than seeing me. She and the herd did follow us back to the gate between our properties but when she realized she was alone again she mooed at them like you wouldn't believe! One of the mom's actually charged at me when I was trying to separate her from the herd! Guess they'd taken a liking to her!
All the roaming around I did, fighting mutant spiders through the woods, I saw three deer run off in the woods, a caterpillar surprisingly still out, cold freezing rain, really enjoyed myself actually...she was just where she wanted to be the whole time. She found company. She found her own kind and probably discovered she really wasn't a dog after all, or a people.

And, I suspect, she's discovered a boyfriend. And those can make an enormous difference on ones outlook on life.

Bambi walked home but, after eating her "candy" went back to the fence out there to look over the fence at what she's been missing all this time.

Now she knows what she's been missing and the future will never be the same.