It’s taken me a long, long, time to get this written up! The day started out just fine… I got a couple of great daily hummingbird action shots:

And our food delivery pickup went great.

Mt. Hood again looked lovely on our way back home again.

Kiko was grazing peacefully in the pasture.

However, when I got back home after making my deliveries an hour later, Nolemana and our neighbors were down at the bottom of our pasture with the gate wide open, blocking my way up the driveway. That didn’t look good. Nolemana told me that when Y. drove up the driveway to pick up their share of the food deliveries, he saw two cows walking down towards him. Oh !#$%.

We called Jake immediately, but he was ‘way over on the other side of town and right in the middle of a tile job and couldn’t leave. Yikes!

Y., bless his heart, rode his quad up to where the cows had gotten out, and whistled for them like Jake does, but they were long gone and wouldn’t come. So I said I’d drive up to the road behind our house on the other side of our hill…it took a bit to find them, but I finally did, munching happily on the grass on our neighbor’s driveway. I was glad to find them, but next would come the problem of getting them back home.

I drove back home to get the grain bucket; should’ve taken it with me the first time. Sheesh. Nolemana was on his way to keep an eye on them. I thought that maybe they’d follow it all the way home.

After getting back in their own pickup, Y. and S. drove back with me. Nolemana had stayed with the cows to make sure we knew where they were, and called me to let me know they’d left the driveway where I’d found them and were heading back up the road again.

They’d found some green grass in someone’s yard; Y. called them with the grain bucket. Bessie thought it was a little interesting, but wasn’t too sure she wanted to come over.

But they did end up coming down. They do love their grain and began following Y. See that white pickup? An employee of Steve’s [well] Pump Service was up doing an inspection and asked if she could help. Bless her! S. is in the pickup on the left.

Y. started walking down the road, and the cows started following him! Michaela, in the white pickup, waited till they got by, with the intention of following behind me to make sure the cows didn’t turn around.

Y. looked like the Pied Piper. Occasionally, he’d stop and give the cows some grain.

S. slowly drove by, wanting to get in front of the cows and Y.

Once she got by, Y. hopped onto the tailgate, and S. drove very slowly with the cows following that grain can. Except try wait! Where’s Hōkū?

Silly pīpī…she’d gone up a driveway, but fortunately came back down again.

It was really going along well, and we were hopeful that we could make our way slowly back to home.

Today was definitely a traffic stopper! Here, we’re coming to the end of SE 257th Drive. Up ahead is Sunshine Valley Road, where we hoped to make a right turn towards home.

Only one problem. See the green field in the above photo? Well, the cows saw it, too, and away they went. Confunnit!!

Y. walked over there and tried to lure them with grain, but they were having none of it.

Our neighbors, whom we’d never even met before, (their house is to the right), came out to help. I was parked at the intersection with my flashers on in case the cows came running back this way.

Then Gordon, the neighbor directly up and behind us stopped to help.

Michaela managed to get a halter on Bessie by holding the grain bucket.

But unfortunately, Bessie is so strong that she pulled poor Michaela off her feet! Michaela walked back over to the field to try and get Bessie (see the halter still on her?) to come, but it still didn’t work. By this time, there were about six people trying to help!

Next, the cows headed up into another neighbor’s yard, and Michaela tried to get them to come back.

With the help of other neighbors, the cows did come back down again. Everyone was wishing we had horses at this point.

I was still at the intersection with my flashers on. There were several dump trucks from a nearby construction site going by, and their drivers weren’t at all happy having to slow down.

This was getting to be quite the rodeo, unfortunately. Michaela managed to get Bessie again and tried to hold onto her; we knew that if we could get Bessie to come, the rest would, too. But unfortunately, the rope broke, and off she went again. She got hold of the halter rope again and Y. grabbed it to help, but this time, Bessie also pulled Y. over! I was feeling so bad that nothing was working and people were getting hurt.

Y. and Gordon decided to try and drive the naughty pīpī back up the road and over the hill through Gordon’s. driveway back to our place. We should’ve tried that first, but didn’t know which one was Gordon’s. driveway till he told us.

In the meantime, I drove back home. This is the fence where the cows broke it down.

Finally, after a lot of hassle, the guys were able to get the recalcitrant pīpī back into the pasture. It had taken us all almost three hours to get them back where they belonged. Sheesh.

Jake was able to get here in the afternoon to fix the fence; he was feeling just as frustrated as we were and was so grateful that we’d corralled the four cows back home again. He told us that he was planning to come over on his way to work to feed them but thought it could wait till later. Nope. He felt really bad that the whole thing had happened.

The cows were back in the pasture and there was a lovely sunset that evening. That helped to relieve the stress of the day.

Construction? Stalled vehicle? Runaway cattle on the road? Now it’s easier to report real-time driving conditions on Google Maps and confirm reports by others. Supporting other drivers helps everyone on the road navigate more confidently.