So my father-in-law thought the best part of living in the country was being able to throw crap out in his pasture. By the time I came into the picture, he'd been doing it for 30 years.
One time one of his half-grown cows got a tire stuck around her head. The i s c & a w and I and perhaps one or two toddler ninos were sitting on our porch drinking lemonade when we saw my father-in-law chasing around this half-grown cow with a tire stuck around her head.
After watching for a half hour or so, my i s c & w says to me, "Why don't you go help him?" I looked at her like she was crazy but I was incentivized in those days to keep her happy so I wandered over through the gate separating our lands and said, "what's up?"
He says, "She's got a tire around her head and I'm trying to get it off."
I asked, "Need any help?" and turned to walk off cause he never wanted my help but he said OK. I was in shorts and flip-flops. I hadn't even grown up in a small town, let alone the country. I couldn't see this going well.
I did about the only thing I had been taught to do with cows, I got on the cows opposite side of my father-in-law and played basketball defense to keep it from getting past me. Meanwhile my father-in-law roped it. Easy enough, I thought, we're done.
Nope. F-I-L hands me the rope and says "Hold onto this while I go get my tractor." So I stand there like the world biggest dork, holding a stupid looking cow with a tire around his neck on a rope.
20 minutes later my F-I-L putts back on his 1950s Ford tractor, takes the rope from me and drives into this little corral where he feeds the things. I get to be gate man. I'm working hard.
My F-I-L ties the loose end of the rope to the tractor and starts pulling out the slack and wrapping it around the back fender of the tractor until the cow is just five feet or so away from the tractor. At this point he can just reach over and take the tire off. Right?
No. He reaches in and the cow goes mad and starts bucking and swinging its head like a bull in a rodeo. And here's the thing that impressed me the most. As she was bucking, she was jerking the tractor around the corral like it weighed about 50 lbs instead of 3000.
I backed up while my F-I-L fearlessly fought to remove the tire. And he might've too. Except that all the crazed mooing attracted all of the other cows, in particular this half-grown cow's momma, Becky, a ten year old longhorn with six foot from tip to tip horns. Becky works her way through the stiles until she's in the corral with us where she inexplicably felt compelled to mount the younger cow.
Mass pandemonium. I would've left right then but I just knew my father-in-law was going to get stomped to smithereens and I felt obligated to see it happen so I could call his name and politely wait for a response before running to call 9-1-1.
I did, however, back up the fence until I was sitting on it. With my legs crossed. I wasn't taking a tip of them horns where it hurt.
Somehow in the melee my father-in-law got tire off and everybody settled down for a minute. I moved in to remove the tire cause I could just see somebody getting it stuck on their head again. That's when my F-I-L moved in to loosen the rope from the cows neck. Top cow fell off and stepped on my foot. Fortunately the corral was muddy with something though it hadn't rained in weeks so my foot and flipflop went deep into the muck and nothing was broken but I didn't like it and my flipflop didn't come out with my foot and I was none too eager to put myself in the even more vulnerable and indefensible position of digging it out. So I hobbled back to the fence where my wife and kids and mother-in-law and the old feller from across the road were standing.
Old feller said, "You lost a flipflop, boy."
I said, "yeah."
I asked my F-I-L what he was doing, he said, "Trying to get my rope."
I said "Cut the rope!"
"My oldest who was about four echoed, "Cut the rope!"
My second oldest who was about 18 months old yelled, "Cut the f----ing rope!"
Everybody just kind of stopped and pondered in stunned silence for a minute.
My F-I-L said, "It's good rope."
The old feller from across the road said, "You don't cut good rope."
I went home. I had helped enough.
