Did that just happen?!? REALLY!!!

 The day after Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. Until Journey started barking out the back window. She loves to sit on the bench by a picture window and look out. When one of the neighbors walks by she'll bark a bit, and then stop. She wasn't stopping. I got up to scold her see what she was barking at, and I couldn't believe what I saw!

 

 It was a cow! A COW IN OUR BACKYARD!!! Ok, we do live in the country, but not by any cow farms and we live in town.

 I sat down with Journey and praised her, after all, this was kinda a situation and she had alerted us to it.

 It was a solid black cow, and since we just got a heavy snow there was no missing him/her (I know nothing about cows besides they taste good in hamburger form)

 I got a little gutsy and went out on our back porch to snap a picture. It turned and looked at me and started pawing at the ground in front of it, so I ducked back inside.

 Justin called animal control and the cop showed up. At first he and a woman tried to corral it, but it was really pissed (and confused, poor guy) and charged them. Then it ran off, and we didn't see it for a while. The poor cop had been chasing the stupid thing all morning.

 

It came back about thirty minutes later, and this is where the story gets even crazier. Now I'm a city girl. I live way out here because my loving husband is a country boy and I love him. Nothing could have prepared me for what happened next.

 The cop pulled in our back alley, and so did two trucks... everyone got out and the pulled out guns. YEAH GUNS!!! They were gonna shoot the cow right in our back yard! I kept looking out the window wishing I'd taken my Dad's silly advise to paint the poor cow white so it could escape and be free. I looked at Justin and said, "Justin, they aren't really gonna shoot it are they?" BANG! poor stupid cow!

 The police officer disarmed all the men who'd come to help, and the poor cow wandered a little before it finally dropped and, you guessed it, BANG! They shot it again! I couldn't believe what was happening!!!

 Poor cow, poor stupid cow.

 Apparently, some dumb kid was trying to deliver the live cow all by himself to Lehr's meat market up the street to be slaughtered. This particular cow did not want to be slaughtered so it ran away, to our backyard!

 They brought in a bobcat to haul away the slaughtered cow.

Gonna try to sell this shot to the local papers, because even though this was Bambi's mom traumatizing I just couldn't stop snapping pictures, and this right here is the money shot.

 And here is the cow being paraded past our front lawn. That's our walkway and truck. Seriously, this all happened right outside our house! I still can't believe it, even though I saw it all and I have pictures. It was seriously the craziest thing that's ever happened!

 There he goes, poor stupid cow.

 Elegy to the Cow

You left your prints in our yard

And you left you prints on my heart

Maybe if you'd ran a little faster

You could have avoided this disaster

Now you're gone my stomach is week

It'll be a while before I eat beef

Poor cow, poor poor cow

Poor cow, poor stupid cow!