From Bad to Worse

We headed to the lease yesterday evening to check the cattle.  Got there and called them up.  They were all there but one, the Bully.  Where would he be?  He is always one of the first ones up to feed.  We looked around the place and didn't see him.  Figured he got into the neighbor's pasture or something.  Decided to come back this morning and walk the fence.

Got up this morning to head out.  Pepper had been barking since 2 in the morning about something.  Walked out the back door to leave and the husband stopped to see what the ruckus was about on the back porch.  He moved my wooden bench and a snake fell out from behind it!  He starts saying a few choice words and grabs the shovel.  Tries killin' it but the shovel is duller than dull.  I run to the barn and get two more shovels.  He finally kills it.

After that excitement, we take off to look for Bully.  We get to the lease and all the cows are there.  Still no Bully.  We go to the back and start walking the creek.  No sign he'd been down it.  Walk some other fence lines.  Nothing.  Check the tanks.  Not there either.  Don't really know why he would leave the place, horses on one side, nothing on the other, and cows off a little ways from the back but there is good fence between us and them.  We couldn't find tracks anywhere.  We finally decided to go from neighbor to neighbor and see if they had saw him.

Unfortunately, a neighbor had seen him.  He told us that he was hit on the road Wednesday night.  They had to put him down cause it broke his back.  One of the occupants of the vehicle was taken by ambulance to the hospital.  They didn't know who the bull belonged to.

We drove down where they said it happened, which was down the road from our lease.  Don't know why in the world he was down there.  We knew he had to do the right thing, and the husband called the sheriff's office.  He told them we thought it was our bull and gave them our information.  DPS will be contacting us.  We'll be gettin' a ticket for allowing our livestock on the roadway.  The husband asked about the people but they didn't give us any more information.

Then the husband had to call Rent-a-Husband because Bully is actually his bull.  He told him what happened and he was very understanding.  He wanted to know about the passengers in the car and how we were (which at the time, was not good.)

So now we wait to hear from DPS.  We do have insurance that covers the cattle so hopefully that will cover whatever we're gonna have to pay regarding the people that hit him.   It's days like this when we wish we don't have cattle.