Fence Mending
It was especially foggy that early September morning. Five o'clock sharp showed up much too early that day, and Harrison's mind was even less enthusiastic about waking than his body was about being wrenched from its resting place. On a typical morning, he would energetically leap from bed, dive into the shower, shivering for a moment while waiting for the water to warm up, towel off, brush his teeth and dress himself in under twenty minutes. He found this routine to be the best way to keep him alert and awake throughout the day, but this morning was somewhat atypical. Having stayed up late the night before comforting two cranky little princesses, quieting the dogs who still had not established the pecking order, and running short errands for his eight-month pregnant wife, Harrison had failed to attain what he would normally describe as "a good night's rest." Of course these activities were something he would normally do, but this particular night they were spaced just right to keep him from reaching dreamland.
Tearing his weary head from the feather pillow, Harrison reached over to silence the strategically annoying alarm. Although there were five buttons on the top of his alarm clock, he always hit the right one – but not this morning. Unfortunately, Harrison hit the weather-band radio button, which in times of inclement weather will provide the necessary meteorological information and forecasts form the local news station, but this morning was not one of those times. This morning's report from the weather-band was a loud fuzzy noise, one that often accompanies a scrambled black and white image at the end of a VHS tape, which the inventors of the video cassette player thought, in their infinite wisdom, would be much better than a blank screen and silence. This noise, of course, was about twice the volume of a mostly Texan crowd after a Texas Longhorns' forty-two to seventeen stomping of the Oklahoma Sooners. Since it was still five o'clock in the morning, this just would not do, but it took a good minute before Harrison was able to come to his senses enough to silence the racket.
Harrison was finally able to find his way through his oddly darker-than-normal room, stubbing his toe once on a laundry basket and again on the slightly-ajar bathroom door, to the shower. As Murphy's Law dictates, it took longer this morning for the water to warm up, but that was probably due to the fact that the water pressure was about half its normal strength. Standing in position for the cool water to drip onto his head, Harrison rubbed the sleep from his eyes and began to imagine how the rest of his day would go; the pressure being slightly less than strong enough to thoroughly wash the shampoo from his hair was probably a good indicator.
Getting out the door about ten minutes later than usual, Harrison killed his truck twice while backing out of his parking spot. He had been meaning to fix the idling problem with it for quite some time now, so the fact that it died twice was not abnormal, though it did add to the mounting frustration of the day. It did not help when the traffic, which he normally misses due to the fact that he leaves so early, caught him right in the middle. It took him a good half hour longer to get to work than he accounted for, with the traffic along with the aforementioned fog. This in itself was not much of a problem, since he usually gets to work at least half an hour earlier than everyone else, but of course not today; everyone else decided to come in early this particular day.
The work day, besides the usual unanticipated problems with servers, failed maintenance jobs and scheduled tasks, and typical modification requests, went by rather smoothly up until lunchtime. A call from his wife prompted Harrison to ask his boss for permission to leave early, which was a difficult situation to be in considering he had arrived late, but his boss was sympathetic and gave him the rest of the day off to handle his domestic issues.
A few years prior to this particular day, Harrison's father in law, who lives less than a mile away in the same rural community as his little family, had purchased some beef cattle. Beef cattle require very little maintenance, food and water being about the only things that require daily attention, and the idea of owning cattle was attractive to Harrison and his father in law, as well as his two brothers in law, who happened to live with their wives, Harrison's wife's sisters, and families on either side of his house. The place for these cattle to reside, of course, was on his father in law's property, which surrounded the three parcels of land on which the three families lived. This arrangement was not problematic. The cattle feed was kept in Harrison's garage, the water troughs were hooked up to the well behind his house, the hay was kept along his four hundred foot driveway. A flatbed trailer for moving equipment, an enclosed trailer for hauling calves to auction, and a red bail buggy, a large fork on wheels used for stabbing and transporting four foot round bales, were all kept on Harrison's lawn. If someone happened to be driving by the property, he would likely assume, judging by the equipment, that Harrison was the owner of these cattle. This was the exact assumption by the Sheriff's office or passers-by whenever a cow was out and wandering along the road late at night, causing general trouble with the passing traffic, which wasn't too much of an inconvenience except when it happened at three in the morning.
On this day, the one in which nothing seemed to be going right for Harrison , some of the cows had in fact gotten out, though not in the road this time; the cattle had found their way into the neighbor's hay field.
Harrison's other neighbor, Mr. Noble, was a horse trainer. So far, the contact that had been shared between Harrison and Mr. Noble did not result in the most positive of relations. On the first occasion, Mr. Noble, an older skin-and-bone gentleman with a foul mouth, had presented himself at Harrison's door early one Saturday, and politely, besides the repeated profanities, informed him that he would shoot his dog the next time it bothered one of his horses. Not impressed, Harrison informed Mr. Noble that he appreciated neither the language, nor the threat, and that he would not speak with him unless he calmed down, changed his tone, and apologized. Surprisingly this did not settle well with Mr. Noble, and he promptly left, in a huff. Another such encounter was at the adjoining fence line between the two properties, at which time Harrison was putting up electric cattle wire to keep the herd inside the fence. Mr. Noble did not like the idea that his show horses may be shocked by this wire, but amazingly he didn't utter a single profanity in the conversation. Harrison explained to Mr. Noble that the electric wire was possibly the only way to keep the cattle out of his yard, given the fact that the horse trainer had removed the barbed wire and replaced it with smooth horse wire. Unlike barbed wire, which gives an unpleasant sensation to cattle, horse wire has no barbs and produces a massage-like effect on the backs and bellies of cattle as they pass through. Not only are the cattle enticed by the green grass on the other side of the fence, but also the very act of crossing over was similar to a trip to the health spa for these bovine beauties, minus the mud bath unless they decided to take a dip in the pond before returning. Despite the benefits of the hot wire, Mr. Noble was not happy, even though it worked… at least until this unfortunate day.
The cows that escaped on this particular day were not trotting along the road; they were in Mr. Noble's field. The weather the previous week had produced strong straight line winds, which had leveled the well house on the property, which of course also provided electricity for the hot wire. Cows are either extraordinarily smart, or extremely stupid. The cows either noticed that they no longer heard the hum of the wire and had stopped emitting electromagnetic waves, or they simply weren't getting shocked anymore and just pushed right through to the green field. This time not one or two cows had entered the field, but rather the entire herd, and Mr. Noble was cussing up a storm. Of course his fence was demolished, which will happen any time fourteen twelve hundred pound animals push through one, and he was determined to vent his frustration on someone or something. Being somewhat of a gentleman, he did not do so when Harrison's wife arrived on the scene. Fortunately for Mr. Noble, he kept it in and did not have to endure the wrath of an eight months pregnant mother of two toddlers.
Before Harrison arrived, his wife and Mr. Noble were able to get the two bulls into the corral and the rest of the cows back through the massage parlor. Stormy, Harrison's dog, was a tremendous asset in convincing the cattle which way they needed to go. The little mixed-breed mutt, whom Harrison picked up in a Wal-Mart parking lot one day, had become a great little cow dog, yapping and nipping at heels to get them moving and directing them into the general area that they wanted them. The bulls, however, were not too fond of little Stormy. They would charge and kick at the dog as much as they could, trying to keep him away. Mr. Noble decided to tie him to a fencepost to keep him form upsetting the bull more, but Stormy succeeded in getting loose every time until Harrison's wife held him down.
When Harrison arrived, one bull was already in his trailer and his wife was getting ready to drive him up to the auction house. The once beautiful sire was bloodied and cut from stem to stern. He had been through the barbed wire corral, metal gates and the doors of the trailer so many times that it was obvious that he would bring nothing at auction, but once one of these guys knows he can push people around, it's time to get rid of him. Mr. Noble was tired and more irritable than normal when Harrison came to talk with him about what to do with the other bull, but before he could say a word, Harrison discovered why Mr. Noble had always been so unapproachable and bitter.
Mr. Noble's wife came up the path, and Harrison's wife imagined that this pleasant old woman would bring some sanity and calm to the situation. Much to everyone's surprise, besides Mr. Noble's, like a fire kindled with starter logs and doused with gasoline Mrs. Noble began a tantrum unequaled by any three year old since time began. Somewhere in her diatribe it could be discerned that she was upset about all the time her husband had to spend getting the se cows off of her property, how stupid Harrison and his wife must have been to get involved with a cattle venture when they obviously knew noting about the trade, and that they were the worst neighbors that she had ever become acquainted with. She also breathed out a threatening about having consulted with a lawyer, and she stated that she intended to sue for damages and lost productivity. Her harangue touched on just about anything and everything that could possibly be going on, not even her husband was spared the radiation of the blast. Every other word from her mouth was so full of venom and anger that it promised a thorough berating to any one that tampered with or even approached her.
Harrison and his wife thought it best not to add any more fuel to the fire by telling her that it was the Nobles' horse wire that was letting the cows through the fence. Nor did they tell her that she was obviously not being honest about having a lawyer ready to sue given the fact that they lived in a free range county, which legally put the responsibility on her if she wished for the cows to not be on her property. Any lawyer in the area would know that. The fact that she obviously didn't know what she was talking about did not deter from the reality that she was likely to tear apart anyone who argued with her at that point in time.
Much like a crowd backs away from a bonfire as soon as it begins to singe off their eyebrows, Harrison, his wife, and Mr. Noble all went back to work on fixing the cattle situation, extra careful to remain expressionless, so as not to tempt the wrath of this woman. Harrison's wife drove the bull to the auction house and dropped him off. Mr. Noble and Harrison quickly led the other bull out of the corral and back through the fence line. Mrs. Noble walked back up the path to her house, and Harrison thought he could see a trail of smoke following like a trail behind her and the grass in front bending out of her way to avoid the flames.
After the work was done, Harrison and his brothers in law began the task of repairing the fence where the cows had driven through. Mr. Noble paid a visit and voiced his concerns about how he believed it would not be strong enough and how it may hurt his horses if they messed with it. These were the same excuses he gave every time, but now they knew the real motivation behind his concerns, and they responded to his apprehension with a sympathetic look and reassured him that they would do what they could to keep it from happening again. In the future, the complaints from Mr. Noble were not as frequent, and had lost much of their intensity.
The next day didn't seem as foggy. Harrison got the rest he needed, as usual. He woke up with an enthusiastic spring in his step, and the water pressure was just right. The drive to work was pleasant, and he arrived on time, as expected. All was right in his world; at least it was today.
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