Battle of Wits: How I was outsmarted by a bull

Three weeks. Three weeks the young bulls had been tormenting my horsey existence. My two horses currently shared a paddock with four bulls, full of the vigour of life. All were as black as clouded night. Handsome young Angus beasts. Quickly figuring out that the colourful tubs bestowed upon their equine paddock mates of an evening yielded delicious treats, the bulls only had to steal a feed once before I decided to feed the horses in the next paddock. A nuisance, but it trumped a repeat of my prior humiliation. My huge bay gelding was quick to give up his feed to the short, stocky beast that barged into his feed tub. I was left to wave around an old bit of poly-pipe (PVC pipe), not game enough to give the bull a tap on the rump in my effort to salvage my dear old gelding’s remaining feed.

It wasn’t just my very expensive horse feed that was under fire. A small yard with a hayshed inside – which we eloquently called ‘the hayshed paddock’ – adjoined the horse and bull paddock. This paddock was as secure as any other paddock – but had a mesh fence for good measure. Since the arrival of the bulls however, it seemed that they were food motivated escape artists. Two somehow managed to slide in between the wires of the fence into the tree-lined windbreak (no mesh fencing there) and managed to sashay on up to the hayshed paddock for a feast, only a single wire baring their way into the smaller yard. Most of the hay belonged to my landlord, but I kept the odd bale of prime lucerne for my special pair. Did these beasts eat any of my landlord’s hay? Absolutely not. Only the best would do, for these roughage connoisseurs. I couldn’t say they didn’t have good taste.

My landlord and I worked to reinforce the hayshed paddock’s defences, placing and securing an old gate where the bulls had so easily entered from the windbreak. All was at peace. Until I brought another bale of Lucerne home. My beautiful bale of legume had been placed in the shelter of the hayshed no longer than a day before I found him. And I knew which one it was too. This was the one who huffed at me through the paddock gate when I waved my arms around, trying to time my horse’s safe exit for their evening feed. He would stand resolutely by the gate, blocking their escape. The other three were relatively respectful of my space, but this one… He had the audacity to stare at me coolly, sucking in a sizable hunk of my beautiful hay. I dutifully opened the gate that separated the two paddocks and carefully herded him back into his paddock.

I inspected the old gate that was supposed to keep the bull from entering from the narrow treeline. It didn’t look out of place. I had expected it to be knocked over. Crouching down to look closer, I realised the bottom wires had come free. Giving it a pull, the whole gate swung toward me, swinging from its top supporting wires. The bull had used the gate like a bloody cat flap. I re-secured the bottom corners of the gate with baling twine, but it happened twice again the next day. And the next. By this time, I’d stopped storing my hay in the hayshed paddock, because I couldn’t afford to take out a mortgage just to feed this Houdini of a bull. However, he had now settled for my landlord’s hay.

On the third day, I found him again, in the hay paddock. He’d busted through the baling twine five times now. Opening the gate back into the horse and bull paddock as per usual procedure, I crept to the bales and climbed up, peeking over, thinking of what strategy would be best to get this young beast back into his paddock. Apparently I startled him, because he took a running leap for the fence. Miraculously he cleared it with enviable grace. It had to be over a metre, and this huge ball of ungainly muscle had cleared it without so much as a whisper of reverberating wire. It had taken my horse and I three years to work up to one metre with our jumping. I wasn’t sure if this bull was even three years old. He was now in the neighbouring paddock to the one he was supposed to be in and he was heading swiftly down the fence-line.

At the bottom of the hill was a gate. If I could get to it in time, I could open it and let the bull through to his proper home, maybe without him even losing momentum. Sprinting down the hill, I aimed to give the young beast a wide berth. I’d made it halfway down when the bull turned on me. Heck. He started barrelling towards me and with what I thought was admirable athletic ability but was probably more of a desperate scramble, I launched back up the hill to the small stand of eucalypts that thankfully wasn’t more than ten metres away. I ducked behind the nearest tree as the bull hurtled towards me. Prepared to be chased around the tree, I held my breath. As quick as he’d turned on me, the bull whirled away, perhaps because his target had suddenly turned into a very large tree, or perhaps it had all been bluff from the start. He kept heading down the hill and I turned tail and sprinted up it for the fence.

The landlord could happily deal with that drama. Pleased to have escaped with all four limbs and my questionable brain intact, I fed the horses as my jelly legs subsided. We never really did outsmart him. Not until we put him in another paddock, a big one with plenty of good feed and electric fencing, well away from the hayshed paddock. And so my two horses and I knew peace once more.