more insanity in the boondocks

my friends were happy with me for posting because they finally had something to read. well... now i have something to post about. and i'm not making this up either.

for some reason that i can't quite grasp right now, we decided to buy a steer. i think our flawed logic was that he could help keep the brush down in the field. at any rate, we brought him home friday night and he was not happy. not at all. he was kicking the walls of the trailer and rolling his eyes and bawling.

so we left him in the trailer overnight, thinking he would be calmer in the morning. wrong.

in the morning, nick brought him a bucket of water and a pan of oats. he kicked the bucket over and cracked the pan of oats in half. so we stupidly concluded that if we let him out, he would perhaps calm down. stupid thing took off out of the trailer like he'd been shot, and made a beeline for the fence, where he proceed to push it down in less than 3 minutes.

the brilliance of his escape plan was that i had the baby and couldn't chase him, and nick had to fix the fence so the horses wouldn't get out. frantically, i call neighbors to see if anyone can watch clay while i go search for the renegade steer. meanwhile, he's fleeing the scene.

when i do finally get out after him, he's nowhere to be found. this is despite the fact that i rode around the woods on our four wheeler getting slapped in the face by branches that came out of nowhere.

so, admitting defeat, i came home, and we formed a new plan. talk to the neighbors. so i go around and ask the neighbors if they've seen him. nope. but then i get to this one guy's house. our steer happens to be a highland, which is one of those shaggy red beasts with horns. so i tell the guy our highland steer is loose and ask if he's seen him.

"is he about 400 lbs?" he asks.

"yeah," i say, starting to get hopeful.

"oh!" he says, as though he's excited. "does he have horns?" he asks.

"yeah," i say, really thinking that he's seen him now. " have you seen him?"

"nope," the guy says.

gee thanks.

so yeah. maybe i should put one of those posters up at the store, with his picture that says, "have you seen me?"

so i was supposed to call a friend back last night, but with all that was going on, it didn't happen. like she's going to believe me when i tell her that i was really out all day chasing a runaway steer. that apparently hates people.

oh, and it only gets better. we still haven't found him, but since we have to get other stuff done, we decided to burn some brush today.

after dousing the perimeter with water, we started the fire. thankfully we had the foresight and intelligence NOT to douse the brush pile with gasoline. so i lit the fire, and the pile of brush just whooshed into a huge, blazing inferno. thick black smoke started billowing into the sky, and i'm thinking everyone within 100 miles probably saw it and wondered what the heck was happening.

yeah. so of course, even though it wasn't windy when we started the fire, the wind picks up and blows a piece of burning brush onto the grass that is not wet. and i'm holding the hose to put it out, but i can't keep holding it, because the heat is so intense. i think i actually burnt my face from the heat, and i was standing about 5 feet away. it was hot... but then again, the flames were about 20 feet high at one point. at least it seemed that way. i didn't have my tape measure out or anything. so anyway, my face is totally all red, and i look like i fell asleep in the sun at pensacola beach. (those are some memories). but i still have my eyebrows.

so we had to put it out with wet towels, which are now completely destroyed. at any rate, i'm not attempting to salvage them. they were old anyway.

so yeah, next time, we'll make the brush pile a little bit smaller. well, it could have been worse. at least no one called the fire department.