So…..I sort of love this picture! When I was 7 the Texas panhandle had an epic blizzard. Lots of snow and high winds caused drifts of snow so tall you could literally walk from the roof of your house to your neighbors. As a kid……….IT.WAS.FREAKING.AWESOME!
As an adult, particularly a cattleman, I’m quite sure it was the equivalent of beating repeatedly on your thumb with a hammer. Just as we children reveled in the massive snow drifts, the cattle all decided to go on a winter vacay. All they had to do was walk over the barbed wire fences and travel with the wind.
And travel they did, miles and miles. I think it took a really long time for all those cattle to be rounded up and returned to their rightful places once the storm was over. Thank God for branding!
However, on the heels of what is being referred to as “Snowpocalypse” or “Snowmageddon”, this photo has shown up on the internet A.LOT. And I really get amused PO’d at some of the comments.
Comments like “how irresponsible to allow your cattle to be roaming loose in such horrible weather!” Ummmm, ‘mkay…..we kind of felt like maybe it would be wrong to lock them in a barn and then have the snow keep us from getting to them to feed and water them. Or heck…..it’s a little hard to ring the bell and holler out the back door…..kids it’s time to come in now (especially when the wind is blowing 75 mph). Another favorite “oh, the poor things must be so cold.” Sorry…we ran out of sweaters for them and couldn’t get to the store to buy more, we were hoping their leather coats and higher body temps would prove sufficient. “How long were they loose?” I guess as long as it took for the winds to die down, the snow to quit blowing, for people to be able to get their vehicles out of the snowbanks and garages they were stuck in and go looking for them.
There is no bigger animal lover on the face of the planet, but where I am from cattle are an industry, a business that has been part of my life forever. I’ve seen my granddad cry at the sickness in his herd, watched him up to his shoulders trying to help a calf be born and saw him dedicatedly be on the spot, on time twice a day to milk. so those milk cows would not suffer from being neglected. These cattle were not loose because people were negligent or uncaring. These cattle were loose for the same reason they get swept away in tsunamis and tornados or swallowed up by earthquakes. This was nature's work and you can’t stop Mother Nature when she’s got her drawers in a bunch.
And really, this group of bovine could very well be from several different herds who found safety in numbers and just drifted along with each other. I think it is funny they came to town which leads me to question……how you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm? Luckily they only went to Pampa.
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