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Sharper, warier, just plain smarter than the rest. Far too smart to be suckered in by the corral and the cattle trailer.  Oh no, sure looks like a bad end could come of that.

This weekend it was time to take the cattle out of the pasture for the winter.  This involves driving the herd into the corral, slamming the gate shut and shunting them onto the waiting cattle trailers, load after load, until the last one is gone.  Persuading the cattle out of the wide open field into the corral is the tricky part. For weeks, hay and treats were strewn inside the corral so that they’d get used  to stepping in for a nosh and ignoring the high, enclosing walls. After all, the gate was always open, wasn’t it.

So the day came with a number of portable metal stock gates hooked together to guide the cattle into the corral.  After a drought-stricken summer, the animals come running when called to get the bale of hay feeding them in lieu of the nonexistent grass. Sure enough, they came out of the cedars and, with a bit of urging, ambled obligingly into the corral and were shut up.

All except the maverick.

Now the maverick is pretty well always a cagey female who has no problem at all peeling off from the herd and taking to the trees when the herd is being herded.  Often, she has a calf by her side and teaches the calf her own independent ways. She is the bane of farmers and can be practically impossible to corner and capture.  The more riled you make her, the faster and dodgier she becomes. Some farmers have become so enraged with this perversity that they finally resorted to a shotgun to end the fugitive’s defiant run.

The maverick this year was a brash red cow with a half grown offspring trotting to her heels.  The rest of the herd milled in the corral.  Two large cattle trailers waiting to start taking on their load. Everyone watched as the cow and her calf dodged this way and that and would not be tempted into the enclosure no matter what bribery was offered. Exhausted herders ran to head her off, then ran again as she outflanked them, then bent over wheezing and panting as the cow and calf headed for the back of the field, the urge for freedom proving far stronger than any instinct to stick with the herd.

The herders took to their SUV which could outrun the cow but not make her stay in front.  Again and again the fast vehicle got ahead of them and headed them off.  Again and again the red cow and her offspring simply turned aside and headed for the cedars and rough ground again where they had the advantage. With impatient cattle trailers waiting, the herders finally abandoned the chase. The rest of the afternoon was spent loading and moving the cattle in the corral.

Only when they were all gone did the herders return.  Not only were the dark cow and calf hard to see in the brush but they no longer had the pull of the rest of the herd to tempt them near the corral.  Capture now required a different strategy. The cow and her calf had had ample time to cool off, perhaps even time to forget why they had been so riled earlier.  The white pickup, used to deliver hay through the drought, drove slowly into the field and stopped.  The herders called, as they always did when bringing day. “Co’bos, co’bos, co’bos,” echoed out, carrying it’s message of bovine munchies, a call that always brought the herd running.  Sure enough, the red cow and her calf emerged from the woods and trotted up to the back of the truck and tucked into dinner.  Slowly, every so slowly, the truck began to inch toward the corral, the two animals following, their noses buried blissfully in the hay.

It worked a treat–until the truck began to crawl through the cattle gates surrounding the corral.  The red cow’s head flew up. No way was she falling for this old trick. She and her offspring turned their backs and briskly sauntered off in the opposite direction. No more would they come near the truck no matter what was offered them. Last I saw was the pair vanishing into the cedars. The weary herders slammed the tailgate shut in defeat and gave up for the night. My sympathy went out to both sides of the game.

Of course the red cow and her calf will eventually be captured somehow and shipped to join their fellows. They can’t spend the winter in the bush.  And the trip isn’t to the slaughterhouse, only to a barnyard with food and shelter for the cold season. If she’s lucky, the red cow will be back in the spring with a new calf to learn her ways.  If she’s not, if she’s caused too much annoyance and frustration, she will not be seen again.

Hence my theory about the constant human assault on herd intelligence, be it cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, horses, whatever.  The maverick is the one just a bit brighter, wiser, shrewder than the rest.  So she is the one who causes the most inconvenience to the farmer, disrupting routine, fighting orders, spotting the weak spot in the fence, refusing to obediently submit.  Ergo, which animal is the farmer going get rid of first — that *#@*%$ contrary troublemaker.  Oh yes, she’s going to meet her Waterloo just as quick as he can send her. And by doing so, that animal’s superior intelligence is removed from the herd. It cannot be passed on to  improve the collective brain power. This is selective breeding — downward.

No doubt this has been going on since animals first became domesticated. While I can’t blame a furious, exhausted farmer who has been outwitted once again by a gate-opening sheep or a cow that hides deep in the woods, I can’t help but wonder how astonishing these domestic animals would be now if only we hadn’t spent thousands of years knocking the brainy ones out of the mix.

I noticed a black car swerve and barely recover.  Saw the wild spurt of dust.  Heard the awful bang. Ran out to find the white van on its side on my grass, wheels still spinning.

So next was to venture over, dreading what might be inside. Lucky for me, the black car did a U turn, sped back and disgorged a young man who ran bravely up to the van window.  Shortly after, two more cars screeched to halt, one with a woman who was an emergency room nurse. As I gingerly approached, the young man talked away to someone inside the van.  To the immense relief of all, a woman eventually stood up inside the sideways vehicle, her head emerging from the smashed driver’s side window.  Apparently unhurt, she wanted to find her phone to call her day care.  Her next thought, which came with a grin probably induced by shock, was the photo she could now send to her boss proving why she wouldn’t drive to work in the morning.

The nurse advised her not to try to climb out the window so we all stood there until the village fire trucks roared up along with the ambulance from town and eventually a police car. Children’s toys, coffee cups, papers and assorted other debris spilled from the lower window, also broken.  The fire department, all togged up in firefighting gear, ran a hose over, standard procedure in case of fire or explosion. They popped open the rear of the van, again pulling out a child’s bike and another cascade of  family clutter before the woman was able to crawl out, shaken, but luckily all in one piece. Her seat belt saved her from being thrown out and splatted by centrifugal force.  I cringed at how close she must have come to hitting the black car on the road head on and what a mess that would have been. Right in front of my window.

Her next most urgent desire was to have a smoke.

This driver, like all the others, claimed, with wide-eyed wonder, that “the car just went out of control” before sheepishly confessing how fast she had really been going.  She adds herself to the parade of accidents, skids, near misses and rollovers that happen in this exact spot.  Last month I drove home to discover a car enmeshed in my pasture fence and a woman standing looking at the damage in  stunned confusion. She took out four steel posts, mangled the page wire and turned her car into a write off.  Of course her car, all by itself, perversely “went out of control” landing her in my domain.  The pasture was full of cattle and required three steel gates to fill the gap until I could wrestle with her insurance company into paying for fence repairs. The lady had been on cruise control, above the speed limit.

Others have gone before her. A teenage new driver took out my fence anchor posts, another car flattened my mailbox, yet another ended up deep in the ditch to be pulled out by a friendly passing pickup truck.  All my culverts have their ends smashed in from cars skidding off the road.  My poor ornamental pine got flattened and now leans drunkenly in a determined effort to keep growing.  A stunted oak in front of the barn sports a large healed scar from a vehicle collision.  That fellow irately demanded why  a damn fool tree was growing there anyway, despite all the empty space around it he couldn’t seem to find.  The fence has been knocked down by a little red car that rolled right over it into the field, leaving a trail of broken glass that had to be painstaking picked up before the cattle could swallow any.

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Nowadays, with the advent of 911 into the country, police, fire and ambulance can be summoned in a moment.  Previously, someone would knock on the door asking if they could call their parents and they were really going to get it because it was their mother’s car they were driving.  Other times, if the car was driveable, parties just backed themselves out onto the road again and sped off leaving bits of chrome, metal, headlight splinters and more fence damage as their only trace.  And this is not counting all the times I hear the crunch of gravel and see the cloud of dust telling me someone veered off  the pavement and had a close call.  Once, a long time ago, a small truck rolled in the yard at night and the passenger (no seat belt) was thrown out was killed.  Luckily, no one has been hurt very much since then but at any moment I fear that story could change.

Not to mention that I walk across that spot every day to get the mail or hike the fields.

My corner is not a bad corner or in any way remarkable.  It is a fairly gentle curve with wide shallow edges and better visibility than dozens of other corners on rural roads. So why can’t folks keep their foot off the accelerator when heading into it?  Probably its the long straight stretch just before, tempting the speedsters.  I get to know them, sort of.  Like the adrenaline junkie on the motorbike I called the Green Hornet who you could literally hear coming a mile away.  There’s a gray Subaru that flashes past early in the morning, making my stomach crunch until it makes it safely out of my neck of the woods.  There are even dump trucks that thunder and shudder as tough guy drivers boost them into racing mode.

Sooner or later, someone else is bound to over correct at the curve or get caught in the gravel and spin round out of control once again. I tell myself that any corner on any road probably has its own history of skids and mishaps.  I just have a front row seat at mine. Half a mile down the road the brush is still broken from where someone went over the escarpment, all the way to the bottom.  A mile up the road, on a far worse curve, a cross on a burnt tree marks the grim end of someone who hit black ice.  One of my earliest childhood memories is of seeing the breadman’s trunk being hauled up from the precipice just beyond that curve. I don’t think the breadman made it.

However, I have noticed a new development along our roads, the appearance of vivid lime green on black signs announcing “High Collision Intersection”. It’s time to call the county engineer and agitate for one of those on my very own speed strip.

If anyone pays attention to signs.

 

 

 

 

 

Every year we go to Picton Fair which has been put on since 1831.  It’s ours.  It’s family.  We look forward to the same things every year even to the one day when it is traditionally rained out.  This year it was Saturday night when radio and TV began to blare with unheard of tornado warnings. Tornado’s?  This ain’t Kansas. We’ve never heard of such a thing here before. Other parts of Ontario may get a very rare tornado (Goderich had its downtown pretty well ripped out a few years ago) but not safe old Prince Edward County. There was rain, there was wind, and even a note that a low grade tornado headed for Bloomfield.

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However, I went in the morning, all sunny and hot.  First the horse show where a young girl who had much trouble getting her fat palomino pony to canter, carried off first prize for both English and Western classes because she was the only competition.  Proud parents hanging over the fence lugged a big camera and fussed happily over English polish and Western glitter. Next was the 4H Calf Club with nine to eleven-years-olds hauling their halter trained young cattle around in a circle for the judges. Half grown steers and heifers are not necessarily cooperative. Some young members needed adult assist boosts to get their animals moving.

The hockey arena was transformed into a showcase of splendid vegetables and flower arrangements.  The massively entered baked goods competition was kept behind glass, perhaps to keep the exhibits intact and safe from hungry admirers.  Pies, muffins, breads, elaborate cakes, all with a wedge cut out for the judges to taste. Best job in the fair, I think, judging the baked goods.

On to the fancywork show where the county quilters display their astonishingly skillful and intricate quilts.  To me, superhuman focus is required to ever finish one of these quilts.  Besides the quilts, there was stitchery of all sorts of knitted hats, mitts, baby clothes, an so on.  The nursing and retirement homes had their own displays of handiwork too.  Old fingers are still skilled. The cat show, which usually also runs in this venue, had to be canceled for lack of entries.  Next year my own kitties might have to step up.

After that the food vehicles making an alluring circle in the parking lot.  Not to be outdone by the Toronto Ex, we, too, have deep fried pickles and Mars bars.  I went for my favorite sausage on a bun with fries and a root beer, powering up for a tour around the antique tractor show and an envious look at the big shiny new ones. Sadly, the demolitions derby was not on until later, so I consoled myself with a visit to the poultry building where ducks, geese, pigeons along with every kind of chicken and fancy rabbit was on display.  Around the outside, for the children, pens with baby pigs, a donkey, a pony, a llama and some sheep were within hand reach.

In the wide open doorway the best dressed dog competition was in hot contention as well as best dressed matching dog and owner. A shiny gowned young girl and her dog, which had trouble keeping on its red wig, won that one.  I think they were characters from the movie, Frozen. Which reminded me that I needed an ice cream cone then and there from the fundraising truck, manned by enthusiastic teenagers, just outside.

On to the Crystal Palace, our scaled down version of Paxton’s 1851 Crystal Palace in London.  Ours dates from 1887 and, saved from neglect and destruction, has been lovingly restored.  It’s the only one left of the many built all over North American in the 19th century. A big factor in its current usability is the replacement of the bands of windows with unbreakable clear plastic. The building stood boarded up and dark for so many years because vandals could not resist flinging stones through any exposed glass.

The Palace is full of art work and photography.  I even entered my fav snake photo in the Wildlife class and was told I would have won a ribbon had I remembered to put my exhibitor number on the tag.  Oh well.  Lots of other gorgeous photos to see as well as paintings and drawings.  Exit with a bag of local cheese curd in hand.  Passed through the county tree service display which included a cross section from a log with rings dating back to when the first United Empire Loyalists settled the county in the 1780s.

So, on home to devour the curd with relish and sit out the evening rains.  The county is so desperate for water that I’m sure people at the fair are delighted to be rained out.  And, if outdoor events had to be canceled, there is always the wrestling to keep the crowds entranced. Next day some claimed we got a whole inch of water from the sky.