Howdy ,
When I was at primary school, we lived on a small farm. The area we lived in was very hilly. Our place had a small, flat area where we lived, but went down a big hill.
The field next to our place had a few trees in it and blackberry bushes (1). Because it went up hill, the farmer didn't look after it very well. He had some cows there, but they weren't his special milking cows. Some of them were females. Others were steers (2).
We children would sometimes go into this field. Because it had trees and things, it was much more interesting and fun than our fields that only had grass. We played games there and at the end of summer, we picked blackberries 😋.
The cows weren't a problem. We were noisy and didn't do anything to them, so they stayed away from us.
One time when I was about eleven, my two sisters and I saw a dead cow there, so we went for a closer look. Sorry if that sounds absolutely disgusting, but we wanted to investigate and maybe see why the cow had died.
We walked right up to it and stood discussing what had happened. The other cows were eating grass not far away. We weren't too close to them and were looking at the dead animal, so at first we didn't notice what was happening.
A big steer had watched us get close to the dead cow. He started bellowing (3). We looked up and he was moving towards us, just walking.
We watched, thinking he would stop and just make a noise. But he started to move faster 😳.
Time to leave! We ran straight up the hill, on paths between the blackberry bushes. The blackberries hurt us a bit, but that was better than what the steer could do to us!
Thankfully we didn't have to run very far. The steer stopped by the dead animal, like he was protecting it. But we kept going and headed home.
I hope you haven't been chased by a big steer (or a bull!). But if you've had any moments with scary animals, please write and tell me about it.
Wishing you a fantastic week,
Andrea
(1) blackberry bushes - the plants that blackberries grow on
(2) steer - a male 'cow', but one that has been castrated so he can't get the female cows pregnant
(3) bellow - the word for when a cow 'shouts' or 'yells'
0 comments