A Night on the Ranch- Read Entry Below First

A Black Angus Bull

The New Ranch - taken from the road as we drove out

After an enjoyable evening spent with our ranch friends, we thought a nice cup of Dilmah tea would be just the ticket before retiring for the night. For some reason the power from the barn to our RV wasn’t working, so we had to use the generator to boil the kettle. Within a few minutes of turning the generator on, we heard a distant bellowing. A bull was calling out to his cows – or so we thought. The bellowing sounded agitated, and seemed to be getting closer and louder. We wondered what was happening out there – it turned out the bull wasn’t ‘out there’ any longer, but beating an angry path right up to our RV. Accompanying the frightening, non-stop bellowing was the sound of determined, pounding hooves – Murray looked out the RV window and saw the bull flash past the rear of the RV. It circled past the RV steps (thankfully retracted in or I fear he would have stomped them off) and when he got to the front of the RV, he turned and head butted the RV which rocked the vehicle. It scared the living daylights out of me. By the time he butted the RV a second time, I was terrified. I couldn’t understand why the bull was behaving so wildly. I was about to ring Clint to let him know what was happening, but then we wondered if the noise of the generator had initiated the bull’s rampage. We turned the generator off, and almost instantly, the bellowing ceased. Within minutes, the bull appeared to storm off to a field at the rear of our RV. My heartbeat took ages to come back to normal, and I lay awake for ages thinking the bull may come back to see if the ‘intruder’ was still present.

I finally fell asleep about midnight, knowing that Murray’s alarm would be going off at 6am so he could help Clint load the cows. We were in a dead sleep when we heard the alarm – only it wasn’t Murray’s alarm, as it was only 4.30am – no, it was our weather monitor alert going off. Residents of counties in our area were being advised to seek shelter as a thunderstorm with damaging winds, lethal lightning and one inch hail was heading in our direction. The weather warnings give the names of counties in the path of the storm; we knew the name of the town we were in, but not the name of the county, nor the ones surrounding us. So here we were at some ridiculous hour in the morning, peering over a map. Yep, sure enough, our county was in the general area of the impending storm. Well, guess what? By that stage we didn’t care – we just wanted to sleep, so sleep we did. Luckily although we got lightning, rain and some hail, the worst of the storm passed us by. Thank you Lord!

A few hours later through the fog of sleep I heard a truck engine. Opening one eye to peer at the illuminated clock, I got a shock to see it was 7.10am! We had slept through Murray’s 6am alarm – or had he turned it off and gone back to sleep? I certainly didn't hear it, and he doesn’t remember if he turned it off. I woke him up and he threw on some jeans and a shirt, then slipped into his joggers. He opened the door and stepped straight off the steps into a calling card left from our bull visitor the night before. That’s right, a nice, fresh, soft green turd! Oh well, there were a lot more of them in the barn where he went to help Clint load the cows. Sadly, we were too late to say goodbye to Amanda & the girls - all I saw were the orange red tail lights of the yellow school bus as it disappeared out the gate. I waved anyway, but knew the girls wouldn't have been able to see me. Can you believe the country school bus drives right up to their front door!

Even now. 2 days later, I still can’t believe the bull saga. When we told Clint about our bull encounter, he said it would have been his black angus bull that was the culprit, but he wasn’t aware of any previous incident like that. Amanda thought the bull may have been reacting to the change he sensed in his environment ie the noise of the generator. Another friend of ours who had a dairy for years (and owned bulls) thought the generator may have had a high pitch whine that can’t be heard by humans, but may be an irritant to a bull. Who knows? All we know is that we had one very angry bull try and take out his fury on our RV. Clint & Murray checked for dents or any signs of damage where the bull head butted the RV, but the RV was intact – fortunately, the bull had been de-horned. We’ll never forget our first visit to the new ranch!