Some random things that happened to me last week that I didn’t think ever would
1) I never thought I would be racing down sidewalks in a large SD town with a pickup and horse trailer, passing a dozen cops in the process.
2) I never thought I would find myself yelling at cops.
3) I never thought the cops I was yelling at would actually try to do what I asked them to do.
4) I never thought I would watch a “cowboy” try to rope a calf with an extension cord while riding in the back of a pickup driving across people’s lawns.
Names will be spared to protect the guilty. I hauled some calves to a sale-barn, somewhere in the Northern Plains Region last week, and disaster struck. One of my calves escaped and ran across a town that we won’t mention. How did this happen you might ask? Ummm…. Suffice it to say that my cowboy abilities can use some polishing.
At first as I saw my largest calf escape out an impossibly narrow crevice, I stared in utter disbelief. There was simply no way this drama was unfolding before my eyes. Certainly it was just my over-active imagination running wild. But as nearby people began shouting and running I knew this wasn’t another vivid daydream. So I did the only smart thing I could do when I said, “Who’s calf is that anyway?” as I just drove away.
I wish that was true, but it’s not. Instead I jumped in my pickup and took chase. Over curbs, across lawns, through parking lots… the chase was on. I considered taking it easy, but just then over the radio came Kenny Loggins “Danger Zone” and a white-knuckled adrenaline rushed foot was pushed to the floor-board. After 20 minutes of terrorizing commuters in heavy traffic, the local police arrived to really mess things up. Their hearts were in the right place, but there vehicles were consistently at the wrong place at the wrong time.
The calf didn’t know what to make of this new asphalt jungle where sirens blared, lights flashed, and some guy with hand-cuffs jumped on it, trying to put it under arrest without reading it its Miranda Rights. Eventually somebody recognized the need for a cowboy, and alas, one was found. Only this cowboy didn’t own a rope, so an orange extension cord was provided. I’m not going into the comedic act, which is a man trying to lasso a calf from a pickup in the middle of a four-lane highway with an extension cord, but at some point during this insanity it occurred to me to have my name removed from my horse trailer.
Eventually, rationality struck the local law enforcement and the pursuit was called off and we let the calf roam free. Thankfully for me, he showed up the next night, right where he escaped from. A lot of lessons were learned that night, but for me the biggest was my acute lack of cowboy prowess. I’m not exactly sure what to do about it, except perhaps enter the Bareback-Bronc riding competition in the Wessington Springs rodeo? Ya, that’s it! That makes sense. Haven’t decided for sure yet, but it would complete my pretty much my otherwise impeccable record of doing really stupid things in public.
