It's Official: I Am Now A Cowgirl

I had just sent off my last extra kid for the day, and sat down to work on other stuff, when I could hear the kids yelling and screaming outside. At first I was thinking it was the neighbor riding his horse down the road again, but the screaming was getting louder and sounding more excited. I walked outside, and there were COWS (yes, cows!) walking down the road and on the neighbor's lawn! Jarren (and just about the rest of the whole neighborhood) was out there trying to get them to go back up the road, so I jumped on the 4 wheeler and took off after them. (Thinking of how I wished I would have had my camara, and maybe a hat or something to make me look more official)

We got them on the canal road with me behind them, and another guy on a 4 wheeler in front. He told me they were his brother's cows, and we were just going to take them along the canal road on home, but not to push them too fast. Ok, sounded easy enough to me. So he took off toward the front again. Pretty soon another neighbor joined in, but also went to the front of the herd.

We're going along and one of the cows was kind of straggling behind (I should have known from the beginning that me and this one were not going to be friends). I didn't want to get too close, so I revved the engine a little and told him to go. I don't know why I was acting like this thing was a dog, and would actually listen to a command, but I did. Yeah, it was a cow and he just stood there giving me the evil eye. So I revved the engine again, and he still just stood there. Ok, so what now? He was looking more ticked by the second, and here's me wondering how fast I can reverse along the curvy road we've been following, or how bad it was going to hurt when he charged me! I was looking around trying not to panic, when he finally turned (looking very annoyed by the way) and started after his friends.

We got to a point where we had to cross a paved road to get back onto the canal road, and this is where the cows decided to get into the canal. (By this time another neighbor had joined in so there are 4 of us now) So we had spend the next 15 minutes trying to get them out. (I am now hoping that Jarren remembers the dinner that I've got in the oven and the house isn't in flames when I get home from my little adventure) When I say we, I really mean they. There was no way I was getting off the 4 wheeler so one of them could come after me. So I just drove around trying to block where we didn't want them to go. They were all waving sticks and yelling hee yah, and git, generally what I'm guessing is cow herding talk. It must work because they finally got them back onto the path, and we went along our way. We hadn't even gone about 10 ft, when my little 'friend' stopped again. I figured since the cow herding talk worked for the others, I could try it. So I gave it my all and yelled hee yah, but I think it sounded more like a fear-filled screech. Needless to say, my hee yah didn't work, but he must have taken pity on me and my poor skills because he turned around and started following again. It was pretty slow going, but we eventually got them back where they needed to be. All in all I don't think I did too bad for my first cow herding experience!