Reece (Stud Ranch)

He nodded to me, reached up and tipped his hat just the tiniest bit, then turned around and headed back into the pasture. The light from his flashlight bounced through the darkness as he went.

During his entire monologue I’d stood stiff as a statue, unsure what to say or do.

As he retreated, I stayed put, then after a few seconds, walked closer to the fence line. And then watched from a distance as he approached a cow that did indeed look agitated.

I couldn’t hear everything he was saying since he was half a pasture away, just the occasional, “Come on now, mama.”

The cow would buck or rear and Reece would scramble backwards, hands out. Obviously, he was trying to urge her in some particular direction, but she’d break and jog back and forth, so he’d back up and start all over again.

My mouth dropped open when during one of these lumbering jaunts, I caught a glimpse of small hooves sticking out the back end of the cow in the light of the flashlight.

Oh my God, he wasn’t joking! That cow was literally mid-labor.

Now that I knew he wasn’t pulling some sort of creepy redneck Ted Bundy come-help-my-injured-cow act to lure me into the dark, I scrambled into action. I had no clue if it was ill-advised or not, but I’d always had a soft spot for animals. I ignored the voice that was screaming that my whole new paranoia-approach-to-life oath had lasted all of five minutes. This was the one exemption, I decided as I climbed the gate of the fence and lowered myself over the other side. Because God, it had to be true. Not all men were Jeffs.

Still, I approached slowly. “How can I help?”

Reece’s head swung my way in surprise, then a grateful smile lit his face.

“We gotta get her through that gate over there. Can you go open it and try to keep any of the other heifers from going through? Then I’ll try to drive her your direction. Just stay clear when she gets close. Got it? She’s upset and probably in plenty of discomfort. We gotta get this calf out of her pronto, but she doesn’t understand we’re trying to help and she could hurt us in the process.”

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.