In Case of Cattle in the Road Dial 9-1-1

Yay! I figured out how to access my blog again. It's been a long while.

After almost five years of living apart, Gracie and I are finally living in Arizona with Joel. Nathan is up in the U.P. for his first year at Michigan Tech...he graduated first in his class this past June--whoo-hoo, Nathan!--and is now studying civil engineering. He was  torn between whether to go for the engineering at Tech or go to CCS or U of M for art/design...in the end, he fell in love with the great outdoors of Houghton, Michigan. He's still not positive he made the right choice as far as area of study, but at least he's made great friends and loves the life up there. The kid is an artist at heart...and hey, an artistic eye will get him far in designing and building bridge-type structures, too, right? Yeah.

So we've been here since mid-August and I'm loving it. Grace loves it but really misses her friends in Michigan. She just turned ten and started the sixth grade, so it's a tough age for her to have to uproot, and a major school transition, but she's adjusted beautifully.

Yesterday, after dropping her off, I turned onto the road that leads up to our house and saw two  fuzzy young copper-colored cows moseying up the hill, seemingly to find their way back on to the wide-open range on the other side of the wire fencing. My first thought was that I should call 9-1-1, but then it wasn't really an emergency per se. It was a slower paced road, but it was hilly, and people did speed, if a car came at them from below, they might get hit. I didn't have my phone with me anyway. I wondered what the rancher's phone number was or how I would find out. I briefly toyed with the idea of pulling over to herd them toward the opening myself...hya! hya! waving my arms to make them go...no, that would just be too comical and dangerous; how would I get them to move that far without accidentally herding them further into the road?

It was only a minute to our house, I would text Joel to see what the standard procedure was for these matters.

He said to call the Pima County Sheriff. I did, but they told me (and very kindly transferred me) to dial 9-1-1 next time I see a cow in the road. The 9-1-1 operator said she had someone on the way. Whew! Disaster averted.

Since living here, that was actually my third encounter with cattle in the roadways. The other two already had ranchers and police there taking care of the situation. Such a vastly different place than Warren, Michigan.