The Bull Strikes Back

What a horrid sight to greet you as you drive up your hill at 7.30pm to find a black hefty bovine shape lumber up from beneath the shrubs beside the pond at our farmhouse door.

In the time that it took to drive slowly past the house to the barn, offload a jerrycan of petrol, and circle back round, the beast had wandered away from the house. I roared up to it with lights on highbeam and horn blaring. And it didn’t even blink. It did paw at the ground. And look mighty mean.

The way it wanted to attack my tank of a 4WD gave me shivers when I thought back on how last week we chased this bull off on foot.

More honking, and it grudgingly wandered a little downhill, taking up a stand beside the driveway. I cut across the slope, right up to the bull, not quite daring to nudge it in case my 4WD came off second best. I drove right past, all the way down to the gate where I watchfully kept the car between my daughter and distant bull as the gate was pulled wide. The monster still had not budged as I drove back up to block any attempt to return to the house.

There followed a crazy game of advance and retreat of 4WD versus immovable bull. Much ominous scuffing of the ground with hooves.

Oddly it was the sound of a large truck thundering past in the gathering evening that caught the beast’s attention. Or perhaps it had excellent eyesight and could see the open gate. Slowly, as we watched with bated breath, it headed off down the drive and out onto the road. The urge to follow it down pushing at its heels had been great, but no doubt if I had tried it would have turned to face me down and wouldn’t have gone out the gate.

We shut the gate, then opened it again drove through and shut it. It seemed a wise idea to push the beast as far as we could along the road towards the owner’s house. I am glad no other vehicle came by as 4WD and bull continued their attack and resist efforts. I won’t go into details about the throwing of rocks, and then herding with car in reverse so rocks could more effectively be lobbed from the passenger side. We gave up when the bull was halfway to the Neighbour’s.

No matter that the fence was burnt out by a fire from our side (which was caused by a firebug outside our property on the other side again), it should still be the responsibility of farmers with livestock to keep their stock from straying. They simply do not care.