Cows on the run

“Look, he loves it!” she shouted. I whirled around to see what all of the fuss was about. My big sister, Pam, was standing beside the barbed wire fence that stood between my parent’s property and my papaw’s cow pasture. She was pointing toward a brown Hereford cow. “The apples, he loves them!” Sure enough, that old brown cow was munching away on some green apples that she had thrown across the fence. I ran over to the apple tree and scooped up an armload of fruit from the ground. The apples weren’t very good for eating. They were small, green, and very sour. We normally just used them for throwing at each other when we had “apple wars.” Pam and I stood there and threw apples across the fence until we had depleted our supply. By the time we were done there were at least a dozen cows meandering around the field with green apple juice slobbering from their chins. They eventually figured out that we didn’t have any more apples and they slowly made their way across the field and over the hill. Pam and I went along our merry way, playing hide-n-seek and freeze tag.

The next day was Saturday and I was out in the yard playing. I saw my papaw out in the cow pasture looking around at the ground. “Hmm, I wonder what he’s up to?” I thought to myself. I walked over to the fence and hollered, “hey, whatcha doing?” He looked toward me with a stony look on his face. “You been feeding my cows green apples boy?” he asked. “Yeah, me and Pam gave em a bunch yesterday” I replied. “Well, they’ve all got the runs now thanks to you!” he said. I had no idea that the apples would cause the cows harm and I tried to explain that to my papaw. He wasn’t hearing it. All he knew was that his cows had the runs and I was at fault. “Well don’t do it anymore!” he bellowed. “Okay,” I said. While I didn’t particularly enjoy getting yelled at by papaw, I couldn’t help but snicker at the thought of all of those cows walking around with the runs. I guess boys just find those kinds of things funny. I know I sure did!