9:55 p.m.

Just logged the last hour of work and decided I should go outdoors, since I’ve been in all day. Put on a warm jacket, picked up Ralph the cat (Ralphina Brucita, I call him) and headed for the road. It’s windy and cold. Usually the wind dies down in the early evening, but not tonight. The dogs bounded out to the grid road with us, where while Ralph purred I admired the pink dusk in the west and the sliver of moon in the south before turning to come back in where it’s warm.

Last night Scott invited me to go with him to “check the cows.” I enjoy these drives through the countryside. We headed up north to the pasture land they call "22," where he got out of the truck and walked slowly among a herd of 14 cow/calf pairs and one bull.

I opened the window and leaned out to watch, and noticed the bull put his head down toward Scott and paw the ground. That made me nervous but, afraid to exacerbate the possibly dangerous situation by calling out, and assuming Scott knew what he was doing and was aware of the bull, I kept quiet and prepared to jump behind the steering wheel and run off that bull.

Scott scratched his head and pointed his finger as he counted cattle. As simple as it should be to count 29 animals (if they weren’t constantly shuffling about, that is), he was at it for quite a long time, as if he was one of those folks who has trouble counting past 10. He had also put on a straw cowboy hat that came in a box of beer, and I laugh whenever I see him in it, I guess because he is no cowboy. At least, I've never seen him on a horse.

When he came back to the truck I asked if he’d noticed what the bull was doing. He had, and had made sure to keep other animals between it and him, and that he had an escape route to the other side of a fence.

On the way home we stopped at another quarter-section where cattle, again cow/calf pairs with a bull, were right next to the road. There, a much younger and smaller bull did the same thing as Scott stood counting; it put its head down and stamped. Then, taking a few steps toward the perceived intruder, it tackled a tiny tree about two feet tall. Scott chuckled and asked when he came back into the truck if I’d seen the first bull do the same thing, only it had tackled a slightly larger sapling?

This behaviour in a bull, apparently challenging Scott or letting him know that the herd of cows and calves was off limits, is normal. It was the antics of the bull in the third group he inspected that puzzled him. The herd was some distance from the fence and when the truck was noticed approaching, the animals ran toward it, stopping in the corner. Scott stepped over the electric wire of the fence and started walking among the herd, looking and counting, as he does, but it was far more difficult because the bull, all worked up, kept chasing the cattle away from the corner.

At one point I saw Scott scurry over to the fence and leap over it as if to get out of danger. From where I sat it looked as if the bull wasn’t after him, but from his vantage point he couldn’t see that the bull was actually chasing a young steer. Anyway, he’d been chiding the bull, saying “Bobby, smarten up!” or “Hare [here], Bobby!” but the bull seemed determined to get the herd away from the area. Scott said this was something he hasn’t seen before.