Earth Day 2020 will forever live in the minds of my grandchildren. When they woke up that morning who would have thought that they would be on the evening news, chasing cows from one end of Idaho Falls to the other? The day started off peacefully enough with school work at home. They knew that if they completed their studies in time they would get to help unload cows that afternoon. The roundup actually started in Montana. My daughter, Jamie, and her husband arranged to pick up three steers in Dillon and bring them to Idaho Falls. The plan was to drive the horse trailer onto the pasture, open the door and allow the steers to walk down the ramp, where they would be happy to see the grass and contentedly start munching and mooing. After all, that is what cows do. Right? Nine excited children, four adults, and one enthusiastic yellow Lab, named Maverick, had all gathered to help. What could go wrong?
Did I mention that these Longhorn steers had been rodeo stock? Maybe it was being blasted with cold air for two hours while going down I-15 in a horse trailer at 80 mph that made the cows skittish. To help understand what happened, I think that it is important to get the steer’s perspective. They had been conditioned by previous encounters and knew that when the doors or the gates flew open, some cowboy was going to jump on their neck, try to twist their head off or rope them and throw them to the ground and then tie them up. Go to enough rodeos and you begin to understand these things—even if you are a cow.
As the horse trailer doors opened, two of the three steers bolted. One barreled straight through the vinyl fence. The next steer escaped after doing a graceful high jump over the barbed wire. This must have been the first rodeo for steer #3 who just wandered down the ramp and started to munch the grass. Steer #1 headed east and ended up cornered on an athletic field at Hillcrest High School. Steer #2 headed west down Sunnyside and was surrounded and tranquilized near South Yellowstone Highway on a construction site. The chase involved kids on ATVs and motorcycles trying to lasso the fugitives, Jamie speeding through neighborhoods with a horse trailer, The Idaho State Police, The Idaho Falls Police Department and Animal Control, video crews from local TV stations, and one online news organization. The law enforcement folks were very understanding and none of the over 100 traffic violations were enforced. However, I understand that one steer resisted arrest, repeatedly gored the fender of the patrol car and will have to pay for damages.
My grandchildren had a big adventure, got dirty, were safe and exhausted and still excited when it was all over. They were thrilled to have famous rodeo and television cows in their pasture. The moms ordered pizza and taught some lessons on prayer while they were eating. The first lesson came with blessing the food and a family prayer of thanksgiving. This was followed by discussions about who had taken time to pray during the two hour chase. Every hand went up. Then they were asked how many believed that prayers are answered. Every hand went up. Two of the cousins had returned early from foreign missions due to The Rona pandemic. They said that they were thankful to be there, because if they had stayed on their missions, they would have missed all this.
That some of my family of medical professionals fancy themselves to be cowboys, still leaves me baffled. They seemed to enjoy the roundup and are convinced that famous cows will taste better. As for me I learned quite a bit about cows when I was a teenager and visited my cousin’s dairy farm in Utah. In fact, after this roundup, I have decided to have even more experience with cows in the future—mostly at Five Guys.
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