Last week, we had some visitors from Redmond visiting us in North Carolina.  I invited a few of them out to my house for dinner – they were interested in seeing this farm that I talk about from time to time. After we got to my house I herded everyone into my car to drive up to the barn.  As we got to the top of the hill, I could tell something wasn’t right.  I saw a pile of hay and a bunch of cows (yearlings) but no hay ring.  The person sitting next to me in the car, apparently, could see by the look on my face that something was wrong and asked me about it.  I told them I wasn’t sure but this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. We got out of the car and I surveyed the field and, immediately, I knew what it was.  Sure enough, half way down the field was one of our calves with the hay ring stuck on its back hips.  Jeez.  Younger animals will go through the holes in the hay ring to stand inside it.  If they are big enough, when they try to get out they will sometimes get the hay ring stuck on their rear hip bones. You may remember a story from some years ago about how I almost ended up in a pond because I got into the middle of the hay ring to try to get it off a cow and the cow took off running, pulling the hay ring and me with it.  This time, I had learned.  I did not make the mistake of climbing into the hay ring and, instead, stood beside it and lifted it just high enough for the cow to get its hips out.  Fortunately, it only took a few minutes and the cow stayed reasonably calm.  All was restored to normalcy and no hard was done.  But I do have to wonder how long that cow walked around that field dragging the hay ring 🙂  It couldn’t have been more than a few hours (because someone checks on them a couple of times a day, at least), but it could have been a few hours 🙂 Here’s a picture Aaron took of me rolling the hay ring back after I got it off the cow.  Unfortunately, we didn’t get a picture of the hay ring stuck on the cow – I was too focused on safely getting it off 🙂 I guess my friends, at least, have a new appreciation for how odd my life can be 🙂 Brian