Where to begin. I was sitting here watching the tv about quarter to one last night and I got a phone call from a friend. He said that a mutual friend of ours shot his cows and needed help gutting them. I thought he was joking but noooooooooooo. So I got the come along into the back of the car and waited around till he went home to get some knives and what not to do the job. So at 2:15 I met him at the bottom of the our road.
So we drove up to this new house I think I told you about where the people have no electric and just moved into it out in the middle of nowhere. Off a dirt road 3/4ths of a mile in. There in his front yard were the two dead cows. One a pregnant 1000 lb cow and a 500 pound calf she had last year. Seems that he had them delivered three days ago and they wouldn’t stay in the pasture and jumped over the fence and run off.
They would herd them back and give them some grain and as soon as they ate it they would jump the fence again and run off. Well, his son is a big fellow and can’t run to good so in the pursuit of the critters the old man bitched at him for not heading them off and he got pissed and left on a bike. So he got his woman to help out and pissed her off and she left. This went on for three days and nights. No sleep for the poor son of a bitch.
So the woman came back and went out again with him and they got them back to the front yard about 10:30. He gave them all the grain he had left and sit in a lawn chair and thought about the situation. Couldn’t sell them back cause there was no way to load them. By this time they were about half wild. On top of all that he ran out of snuff. So at 12:30 he went in the house and got the gun and blasted them so they wouldn’t run off. Shot the one five times.
The woman got pissed cause they cost them 700 dollars. She called this friend who called me. The cow was a good clean kill. She filled up with air though and when we rolled er over on her back she let out the air and the gut looked like a big balloon deflating. It is a good thing the air went out or we would have never gotten the guts out. There we were all three of us with out hands under the things guts pulling and the one friend cutting around them so they would free up. Would have loved to have had you there taping it.
Well the friend that called me was just getting off work at 12 and was having a gall bladder attack and every so often he had to stop and bend over to get relief from the pain and he puked twice. Says he has to go in soon as it felt like one of his ribs were broken it hurt so bad. . We arrived on the scene and it was pitch dark and we gutted them two animals and was done just as the sun was coming up. He did all the cutting and I don’t know how he did it. I told him he was a WV mountain saint There sit two cattle on their backs with a rock under each side so they wouldn’t tip over and a pile of guts by their asses. I was holding the cow’s guts when the calf slid out the belly cut and he said, “there she gave birth”. Funny as hell.
We had shit, blood, gut juice and everything all over us. Got home about time the wife was going to work. Stayed up all day and planted corn.
I know why he shot them. He thought out all the options and just couldn’t stand it any longer having to worry about them and him with no sleep for three nights. He just wanted to end it and that was what he did. Seems around here that is the solution to everything --- get a gun and shoot it.
While he was try to settle the cows after the boy left he got a call that the boy went down on the bike at Dead Dog Curve so he and his wife had to leave the cow thing to go tend the boy. He was knocked out but came to but passed out two times on the way to the emergency room. But, the doctors said he was okay and lit him go. When they got back home the cows were gone.
Something else I didn’t tell you. They guy who owned the cows is a war vet who is on anti-psychotic meds.
Another thing about that story we did all the work with one light on the cutters head and just as we finished and got the tools and stuff in the bed of the truck the bulb burned out. What luck.
It was one of them rechargeable coon hunter’s lights that will go for eight hours.
When we went in to wash our hands the wife woke up but couldn’t come down stairs without help from being sore from chasing them cows for three days. She is maybe ten years younger then us’ens.
He called the slaughter house and they told him about the guy with the truck and wench and all so he called him and his wife gave him his cell phone number and he was on the road anyway and just drove on over.
He was lucky on that score as it was in the high 30’s up there last night and it took the sun till about nine to get over the mountain to land on the meat and they had it hauled out of there by then. I would say he got it in just in the nick of time. Course if we hadn’t taken the guts out of them before rigormortis set in it would have been ruined as to stiff to gut them.
One more thing. As soon as we slit the belly and the guts were exposed to air his two roosters took to crowing and it was pitch dark. Figured they picked up on the smell of blood and all.

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