Poor Grey...

Let me say before I begin that Grey gets paid well to help me around here. The worse the job, the better the pay. This was one of those 'better paying' gigs.

This morning I needed help moving cattle panels, setting them up and getting my jersey bull, Rutherford, into the pen. Apparently pretty wooden horse fencing will not hold in a bull who is being teased by my neighbor's angus hos across the way, necessitating the need for a new bull pen of iron cattle panels. Also, I need to explain that jersey bulls are notoriously ill tempered and even though Rutherford is still very young, I treat him like a loaded weapon. Particularly since my neighbor was killed by his bull just a couple of years ago. I'm telling you, it's rough out here!

Anyway, I needed to do this project early this morning and it was very cold. I called my son, told him to get out of his warm bed, get dressed and come down to the barn to help. Although Grey isn't into animals, early mornings or cold whether, he was reasonably agreeable.

After we had set up the new pen, I started thinking about how to go about getting Rutherford from the barn into the pen. I decided I would shake a bucket of food and have him follow me sweetly into the pen. Now this is how I planned things, but you know how plans have a way of turning into fiascos, so I told Grey to get into the tack room and I handed him a hoe. In answer to the puzzled look on his face, I told him not to come out of the tack room unless the bull had me down, in which case he was to get busy. I could tell he was still rather confused and/or asleep. As intelligent as he is, animals are a complete mystery to him and he had no idea what he was supposed to do with the hoe. I explained that if I was down, he was to take that hoe and hit that bull across the nose as hard as he could and if he couldn't get to his nose, "just start trying to hack up his spine". To Grey's credit, he just nodded and got into the tack room with no commentary about why I was allowed to run around loose.

As I was explaining to Grey what he was going to have to do if I was down, I realized what an amazing kid he was to listen to this nonsense in the cold and not throw down the hoe and tell me, "no can do" as he headed back to the house. Also, in the back of my mind I could hear someone saying, "how'd she die" to which someone else would say, "well the fool was mud wrestling with her bull and got wacked with hoe".

If you're wondering, the bull did indeed follow me sweetly into the pen and the hoe was not needed after all.