It's Always Something

Last night I stopped at our neighbors house and she asked me "have you been home?" I hadn't and she said, "you'd better go home". When I asked her why she said, "I can't tell you. Have you talked to Art yet?" At this point I made her tell me what was going on- Art had come home about half an hour before and discovered that the cows had gotten out. A lot of swearing ensued and I drove home, calling Art to see what he needed me to do. He had found the cows in the adjacent soy bean field and was hearding them back to the barn (they hadn't gone far). When they started walking the wrong way, he asked me to park down the road, come into the bean field and try to push them in the right direction without scaring them. Our neighbors came by to help, too. I'm walking around this bean field, calling "Cows! Baby Cows! Time to go home!" in a loud but unthreatening voice so that they know where I am, while talking to Art so I know which direction to move (what did we do before cell phones?). I was in the southern part of the field because that's where they were headed, last I had been told. So I'm traipsing through three foot tall soy beans trying not to step on any of the plants and because they no-tilled the ground (meaning that there were old cornstalks sticking up between the rows) every few feet I lost my balance and fell down. The dew had set in so my pants (and because of the falling, my shirt) were soaked through. At this point I'm also not trying to think about what might be living in the field that could potentially crawl on me (I may live in the in the country but that doesn't make me a country girl). I tried to call Art to find out where the cows were. No answer. I can just hear he and the neighbors' voices near the barn so I tried calling again. Again, no answer. I didn't want to yell out in case I spooked the cows so I kept trying to call Art while continuing to call for the cows. By about the eight call, Art finally picked up. He asked, "what are you doing?" This seemed a strange question to me but I answered him anyway and told him I was in the field trying to find the cows. He said, "But the cows are back in the barn. Didn't you hear me yell at you?" Well, of course I hadn't or I wouldn't still be in a bean field, falling over and wet at 10:30 at night. Why he didn't just pick up the phone when I called him, I don't know. But because the night was so still, he and the neigbors got a kick out of hearing me calling for the cows long after they were in the barn.