Moo

I do not expect to look out my kitchen window and see cows in the back yard - kangaroos, wallabies, foxes, the occasional bunny, but not cows. Today, when half awake and making my early morning mug of tea, I glanced through the window only to see two large brown Jersey cows munching grass outside my back gate. This pair belong to a woman who lives further down my road, and they are usually safely in their own paddock - but somehow they had escaped and wandered down my way.

I rang Robbie their owner immediately and offered to help her round them up and get them home. My offer was refused as she said it was easier to do it on a bike, and that she would get her neighbour Al to help. Now Al is legally blind, with tunnel vision - he does ride a bike around town, in straight lines on roads - but chasing cows through gardens? This I had to watch! By the time they arrived, the cows had moved next door to my neighbour's immaculate garden and I watched as Robbie and Al shepherded them over the grass and out the gate, then rode gently behind them as they ambled home - it was all quite simple and without further ado.

About an hour later, I recieved a phone call from my immediate neighbour with the immaculate garden, who had been out when all this was going on. His garden was immaculate no more - hoof prints through garden beds, bike tracks and cow pats on his grass, plus it seems the cows had unfortunately been loose for a while before I noticed them, and had trampled his vegetables and eaten his cabbages. He was not a happy fellow.