I didn’t have this light turned on!

Sometimes my life brings me sweet surprises and this morning’s adventure still has me laughing. Of course, it could have been a completely different outcome, including chasing, colorful language, and eventual capture.

I like to run in the very early morning because it is the best view of the stars, there is a peace that time of day providing the space to think and to pray, and I still have plenty of time for chores and work, and coffee, when I get back. On my own, I usually feed as soon as I get back. That means it is still dark.

Right now we are babying a little bull who had a cough and he is in the corral next to the barn where we can give him grain and his own stash of hay, and mostly keep a closer eye on him. When I open the barn door to get his grain, much like the horses, he is at the feed trough and ready for the deposit. Today, he wasn’t there and even when I called to him, he didn’t come over. I couldn’t see anything.

Taking a step back, I realized that my neat stack of easily accessible hay-left for me by one of the most thoughtful guys I know-was all messed up, torn apart, and scattered. At this point, I smelled a rat and I replayed the previous morning’s feeding in my brain to make sure I’d closed all the gates. My first suspicion was that the horses must have done it! They always get the blame, fair or no. But, my mind movie assured me that I had closed all the gates.

Then, I heard him… a plaintive kind of lost sound, but definitely bovine. He’d gotten out and ransacked the hay pile, stood by the gate into the pasture for a long while probably wondering why no one was letting him back in with his buddies. I know he must have stood there a while because he left several piles of the ransacked hay that he’d spent the day composting.

I guess the lonely little guy gave up, because I was gearing up to play, ‘find the bull’ and he’d gone back to what was familiar and had gone through the loading chute and into the tiny pen that holds cattle when we are loading them into trailers. He could have turned around and gone back out, but it must have been a comfort to him. He stood patiently while I opened all the gates that would allow him back into his corral and I left him happily enjoying his grain while I fed the rest of the bulls and the horses.

Do I know how he got out? Most certainly, but I am pleading the 5th.