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Posted by: thepinetree on 05/30/2009 01:44 PM
Updated by: Kim_Hamilton on 05/30/2009 07:05 PM
Expires: 01/01/2014 12:00 AM
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Welcome to the country...So you’ve decided to move to the country where we have the seasonal running of the bulls ~By Charity Maness
Copperopolis, CA...No you have not moved to Pamplona, Spain. To witness the running of the bulls Calaveras style you may have moved to any number of the scenic towns popping up along the highway 4 corridor that boast an over abundance of bovine beauties and the finest specimens of bulls to be found in the state (though some may be missing their more important parts making them steer.) You might just be out for a leisurely drive with your husband on a beautiful spring morning, enjoying the fleeting spring green rolling hills and the gentle winding roads (come on, compared to Lombard street these roads are gentle winding roads, let the author have a little creative room here ok?) when you come across a bovine beauty munching on the lovely greenery along...
the side of the road. Of course your husband feels the need to slow from 55 to 15 in 3.2 seconds, causing the said bovine to be startled and you to almost lose consciousness. What does a startled bovine do you ask? Why it runs. And guess what? All its friends run too. Next thing you know you have a stampede running down the middle of the road headed right towards you.
If you are from the city you may be thinking dramatically, “This is the end!” however, if you are from the country you pull over jump out and attempt to round up the ferocious beasts. Knowing they are not carnivores helps boost your courage a bit, but when they decide to turn and head towards you, you can pretty much calculate that the cow to human weight ratio just doesn’t add up and that you might possibly lose. This would be a good time to jump back into the car.
By now the local phone tree has lit up and any cattle rancher in town has been called to this bovine emergency. For some strange reason, once people know you own cattle, you are on everyone’s emergency cow call list, even if the cattle are roaming around on the opposite side of town from yours.
So if you haven’t figured it out by now, the running of the bulls, I mean steer in this story were mine. Lucky me. Please say you hear the sarcasm there. But guess who got the phone call every time they got out? Not me.
My brilliant steer must have secretly observed my morning driving patterns for they somehow knew I drove that particular stretch of road every morning around 7:30 am and those little boogers would be outside the triple strand barbed wire, three rail fence each morning as I drove by, lazily munching on the tall grass. After spending multiple mornings running around like a crazed woman with some local help, I called in the fire department for back up. Did you know that firemen know how to round up cattle? Pretty cool. At least Copper firemen do. After a week or two of this, I was informed that they were no longer able to respond to my daily cloven hoof escapees unless it was an emergency, after all the tax payers were not paying for them to be ranch hands they needed to be available in case of an emergency and preferably not covered in mud and ripe cow patties. Understandable.
With the Ghost Buster’s theme playing in my head “Who ya gonna call?” My brilliant mind came up with The Highway patrol! That CHP was really good at rounding up and catching cattle. Evidently it’s a daily call for him and not just for my wayward beef. Honestly, if you were a cow, wouldn’t you do what the nice armed bipedal creature said?
One would think that I would learn from all this running around and misuse of public agencies, but noooo. My final lesson came on the day that I was going to spend a relaxing morning with my friend in Angels Camp, a little tanning at Sunsual, a little coffee at Starbucks (Snaps wasn’t open yet) all in all a nice morning. When I turned the corner on O’Byrnes by where my cattle grazed, any hopes of a relaxing morning were dashed. I notice not one but three of the heathens had escaped. I told my friend to man the gate, I thought I was being smart what with my friend being the city type I didn’t want her chasing cows. This was a bad decision on my part. I manage to round up the three wayward beasts and head them toward the gate. My friend, excited to be on this country round up opens the gate, lets out the remaining cows and the paint mare. I stare in utter amazement as she calls to the horse, “No, no, Sunshine, come here.” I guess she thought it was a 1200 pound dog. This was going to be a long morning.
After rancher extraordinaire Steve came to my aid he informed me that those clever little cloven hoof creatures will continually check the fence line for weaknesses and will just keep pushing until they get out. The only thing that came to mind were the Velociraptors in Jurassic Park, remember they would continually test the electric fence looking for weak spots? This cattle ranching stuff is obviously not for me.
But it sure tastes good 
Until next time…welcome to the country.
P.S. Thank you Steve for fielding all the cattle calls and coming out to help multiple times even though they weren’t yours. Just think, now you have a ton of goofy Charity stories to tell over and over again.
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