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I nodded. “Got it loud and clear.”
I hurried over to the gate he indicated. It took me a second to figure out the latch system in the dark. The full moon helped.
I felt a rush of adrenaline once I got it open and flung it wide. My presence had disturbed the other cows in the pasture but luckily, none of them were too close.
Then Reece got behind the laboring cow and started clapping his hands and making a ruckus. The cow trotted away from him, coming straight my direction.
I got the hell out of the way, backing into the pasture and out of the way of the chute the gate opened into.
I wasn’t exactly sure how my day had turned around from fleeing dirty old truck drivers to fleeing from angry cow mothers, but hey, who said life wasn’t completely ludicrous sometimes?
“There you go, mama! That’s right!” Reece called from behind her.
She ran straight through the open gate and through into the corral lane. Reece followed fearlessly behind her, even though she was not happy to find herself in a narrower, more confined space.
“Keep going, don’t stop, mama,” Reece said, continuing to clap. “On into the barn we go.” Then to me over his shoulder, he called, “Close the gate up behind us, then follow outside the fence to the barn if you still wanna help.”
I hurriedly closed the gate the same way I’d opened it. Reece and the cow were already moving down the corral lane towards the big barn that loomed in the distance.
I moved faster than I would have thought possible after the day I’d had and no real sustenance. But somehow the mother cow’s drama seemed more pressing than mine.
I climbed the fence and then ran along the short, penned corral to the barn where Reece was trying to coerce the upset cow to go where he wanted her.
“Come on, mama. No, Jesus, don’t charge me, dammit! Just go in the—”
By the time I got over the corral fencing again, I saw the cow had Reece cornered in one area of the barn.
Reece scrambled up on top of a tractor right as the cow charged towards him, hat flying off as he went. The cow trampled the spot where he’d just been standing, demolishing his hat. “Well, that was just uncalled for!” he said, flinging out an arm towards the cow. “That was my favorite.”
I wasn’t sure exactly what a ‘chute’ was, but a good guess said it was the big contraption with lots of metal bars the size of cow on the opposite side of the barn from where Reece and the cow were tangling.
“How can I help?” I asked.
Reece looked my way. “Oh shit. Get outta here. She’s too unstable.”
The cow’s head swung my way. She took several steps toward me across the barn.
“Hi, pretty mama cow?” I said uncertainly, taking a few steps backwards.
She mooed angrily in my direction and stomped more steps towards me.
Reece took the few moments of distraction to leap down from the tractor. “In you go, Mama,” he said, shoving on her backside, then quickly dancing out of the way when she bucked with her back legs. But she did run forward—right into the chute.
Reece again moved quickly, faster than I would have thought possible. He locked in the bar behind her back legs and then closed the front of the chute bars around her neck to hold her in place.
His whole body slumped backwards after he got her locked in. The cow rammed back and forth in the chute, but was finally caught safe.
“Oh my God, are you okay?” I asked, running forwards towards Reece. I didn’t know the guy, but that was just— He’d almost been trampled by a cow.
Reece just sucked in a big breath and nodded. Then he said, “Okay, now we gotta get the calf out of her.”
Whoa, damn. I looked back at the cow in the chute, feeling my eyes go big. I’d been so concerned with catching the angry runaway cow, I’d all but forgotten about the reason we were trying to corral her in the first place.
“Do we call a vet?”
Reece had the flashlight up and was already yanking open cabinets and sorting through stuff on the shelves on the sturdiest of the barn’s walls. “Don’t I wish,” he said.
Then he must have found whatever he was looking for because he rushed back.
