Paying Attention – Sixty Years of Experience

I just spent a couple of hours having the most fun I’ve had since I gave up my horses– using my Kubota to herd a neighbor’s Angus bull into the corral.

When Jerry and I started our usual walk to the mailbox, we noticed the cows were excited and jumpy, and realized they were gathered around a couple of black bulls. Our lessee had apparently decided this was the time to turn his bulls out; service in July will result in calves in April.

We noticed the bulls seemed to be sparring a little, but that’s normal when two bulls are competing for the favors of a group of cows. They soon settle down to their jobs– impregnation– and realize they don’t need to squabble.

Soon, though, we saw our neighbor coming down the road, and realized that one of the bulls belonged to him. His cows were disconsolately standing along the fence, missing their bull. He’d have to go home and get a horse and a trailer to collect the bull.

Let’s see if we can get the bull into the corral to make it easier, we decided: and so the fun began. The bull did not want to leave his new-found friends. Jerry and our neighbor grabbed long sticks and strolled toward the cows, hoping to be able to ease around the bull and get him into the neighbor’s pasture without much fuss.

Skeptical, I went and got the Kubota ATV. When I got back, the bull and all the cows in our pasture were galloping happily around the pasture, with the men panting in their wake. I eased into the group, hoping I might be able to separate the bull, since he was with strangers, and encourage him to go toward the men. We’d either get him into the neighbor’s pasture, or shut him in one of our corrals so the neighbor could collect him with a truck and trailer.

I grew up maneuvering a little Arab mare around bulls as big as this Angus, a sleek-headed black collection of muscle that weighed a ton or more. My little mare was nimble-footed and entirely without fear of critters that were probably double her weight. And I have always had the instincts that my dad called “cow sense,” so we made a good team. I’ve missed her every day since she died.

This bull seemed to think that all he had to do to get past my orange steed was to roll his massive shoulders and shake his head threateningly, throwing snot over his shoulders and my windshield.  Another of my dad’s maxims was, “It helps to be smarter than the cow,” so I drove slowly, watching the bull’s eyes and the way he carried himself: with the confidence of a prize fighter.

I’d already learned the Kubota could, as we used to say, turn on a dime and give you nine cents change, so I knew exactly how close I could come to a post without slamming on the brakes. And the big bumpers on the front are pretty solid.

Only someone who has handled cattle from horseback will understand how I used cow sense to know just what to do and whether that bull would climb in my window. I can’t describe the twisting, turning, galloping contest, but I wish someone had been able to make a movie of it.

I watched that bull’s head constantly. An experienced rider who has moved a lot of unwilling cattle would understand how I knew when he was going to turn and when he was going to come straight at me. That knowledge is part of paying attention to cattle for sixty years.

When he dived into the mud hole, I went around it and met him on the other side. He ran and jumped and dodged, but I know every rock and hole in that pasture. Afoot, on horseback and in a truck, I’ve been paying attention to that pasture for six decades, so maneuvering around its pitfalls with the agile Kubota was a challenge I enjoyed. The knowledge from that close observation is buried way deep in the cerebral cortex, but it expressed itself through my hands on the steering wheel and my foot on the gas.

The bull and I soon left Jerry and the owner behind, but eventually we collected ourselves behind the cows and herded them all into the corral. With a little more deft maneuvering, we cut out the bull with a few companions and shut him in a corral with steel gates and high fences, where he stayed, panting, until the owner went home and got his pickup and trailer.

The bull is back in his home corral now, having spent all the time he’s going to get with his cows this season. My Kubota is resting quietly in the garage.

And I’m still grinning.

Linda M. Hasselstrom
Windbreak House Writing Retreats
Hermosa, South Dakota

© 2018, Linda M. Hasselstrom

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All writing begins with observation, which may lead to quick notes in a journal or on a scrap of paper. These notes expand in the mind and on paper into something with more detail– the notes or journal entry becomes a draft which becomes a poem or essay or simply the basis for deeper thought. The important thing is to notice, to be constantly prepared for the unexpected, to Pay Attention.

— LMH, 2018