Cows and Cats and Fowl...Oh My!

"Hey, there's a calf in the side yard!", yelled Spud.

" A what?", asked The Colonel and I.

"A calf.", repeated Spud.

By the time The Colonel and I made it outside the calf had hightailed it into the woolly lot next door where it joined its mother.

The Colonel and Spud ventured into the woolly lot in search of the cow and calf. I stayed on the perimeter (being a mother myself, I know how protective we are of our offspring and the cow in the lot was sporting a pair of horns that looked as if they could protect her calf very nicely if called upon to do so. I told The Colonel to be careful and protect our baby, Spud, and himself).

The cow and calf were foraging and grazing on the lot. At one time the cow wandered onto the road, but The Colonel herded her back into the foliage. He was afraid the cow and her baby would be hit.

We had no idea whose cow it was and knew of only one man to call. Maybe it was his (he has some cows in the lots in the area), or he might know whose it was. He is an honest-to-goodness real cowboy. We filled him in on the situation and he said he would be out as soon as possible.

Jimmy and his wife pulled up with his horse and cur (cow hunting dog) in tow.

The Colonel and Jimmy went into the overgrown lot on foot and searched for the cow and calf. They did not find them, they had moved on. Jimmy said he would drive down the road and look for them as he checked on his own cattle.

An hour or so later Jimmy and his wife pulled up again to let us know he had found the cow and calf. They were near the lot where some of his cattle were kept. He said he had lassoed them and put them in with his cattle until he could find out who they belonged to. I sure wish I had been there with my camera (but it had begun to rain and I had dinner on the stove) to document this for the blog. It is not often you get to see a real cowboy at work, roping cattle on horseback.

On a different day The Colonel was driving down the road near our house (making yet another trip to The Home Depot because we have another hardscaping project on the horizon...stayed tuned) and he saw something running on the road ahead of him. He thought it might be a dog but then noticed that it ran more like a cat...a BIG cat. He got a little closer and saw that it was a Bobcat. It looked over its shoulder a couple of times, getting a glimpse of The Colonel, before it veered off the road and into the trees.

The Colonel does not travel with a camera (unlike me, "Rainman") so he was unable to get a picture of the Bobcat. The picture below is from the Internet. Just a little eye-candy for this blog entry.

Yet, another day...

The Colonel and I were watching T.V. when we heard a strange, loud sound outside. It sounded kind of like a bird, a big bird...a very pissed off, big bird.

Riley, our cat, was crouched near a big bird and the bird was telling him to back off in no uncertain terms.

The bird was odd looking. We had never seen one before, especially in our yard. I said to The Colonel, "I think that is some sort of Guinea fowl" (how I knew this I cannot say, perhaps the many hours of PBS and Animal Planet viewing).

I was correct in my bird identification. Thanks to the magic that is the Internet, I discovered that this was a male Guinea fowl and that they a native to Africa....so we gave the bird the moniker of Kunta Kinte.

Kunta Kinte walked around our yard eating bugs (that is what they are famous for) and "yelled" at Riley every once in a while for two or three days (Kunta spent his nights in the same woolly lot next door that the mama cow and her calf were earlier).

We have not seen Kunta in a couple of days now. I was getting used to him and hoping he would stay to help keep my yard bug free. He must have gone back home, wherever that is (we read the neighborhood chat site and found no one had reported a lost Guinea fowl). Maybe he will return one day, maybe not...for we all know that...there's no place like home, right Dorothy?