The Jumper

Dan has been very busy working on our massive garden plot. One of our neighbors refers to it as The Market Garden. But he took time out to move the steers from paddock #1 aka Mt. Everest and asked my help. I put away all that vital stuff I was doing - cutting quilting squares, eating toast and honey, listening to Rod Stewart - and put my shoulder to the wheel.

Literally. My job was to park my car above the route to the quarantine paddock, rest my shoulder against the car, and wait. The plan was that when Dan rounded up the steers and sent them my way, they would have to turn down toward the correct paddock. And the plan worked. Well, 3/4th of it worked. Three steers moved out smartly and trotted down the hill. The fourth ran straight at the fence into #2 and clambered over it and sprinted away.

I took out after the 3 steers while Dan chased down the jumper. He gave up pretty quickly and joined me in putting the docile bovines into the correct paddock. Then, leaving me to guard the gate so the 3 wouldn't leave while the gate remained open to embrace Mr. Jumper, Dan headed back to paddock #1.

I waited. And I waited. And then I waited some more. Finally Dan arrived. Alone! It appears that the jumper decided he liked the thrill of the chase and jumped another fence. This one into an adjoining farm. We didn't know these people but they have a huge farm and Mr. Jumper could be anywhere.

Dan drove the quad over to the farm to see if he could find our steer but no luck. We got hold of the estate manager who does not live on site and arranged that we would drive the docile three to the neighboring farm, hopefully linking them up with the jumper and then herd all 4 back to the quarantine paddock.

This involved using the main road and was quite a hairy undertaking. Or so I was told. I remained at the house babysitting. Yael said they never could have done it without the aid of the estate manager and his fabulously trained dog. I've got to get me one of those. All I need is about $4,000! Perhaps later.

The end of this story is that the next day, the jumper was picked up and sent to auction. He had always had a wayward spirit as you can see from the above picture, and now he would be going to a larger farm with more stock where, hopefully, he would settle in. Our remaining 3 steers seem quite relieved to have him gone. And so are we.