A very moo-ving story

 Published March 28, 2013

in the Stockton Sentinel

by Nancy Becker

            One morning, not too long ago, I sat down at the dining room table with my bowl of Scooters cereal and a Cutie, and spread the Salina Journal out in front of me – all normal morning routine. But that particular morning, there was nothing “normal” about the Salina Journal, because on the front page, in full color, was a picture of a cow, peering out of the second-story window of a weathered barn. The subtitle under the headline, “Moo-ving on up,” summarized the story: “Hobby rancher finds out he has a big problem after heifer finds her way into a hayloft.”

            Now I don’t have a whole lot of farm girl in me, but I have enough to know that it would be difficult to get a cow to go up a series of steps. The story that morning was great; in fact, it made my day. So I decided to share it with you, knowing that many of you do not receive the Salina Journal.

            It happened on a cloudy afternoon, and the owner, Brian Schmitt, thought he heard thunder, but he soon discovered he wasn’t that lucky. He found the sound was coming from the hayloft of his barn – an 800-pound problem in the form of an 18-month-old heifer named “Mignon.” (Yes, as in ‘filet mignon!’) There she was, with a forlorn expression that seemed to suggest, “Oops. What do I do now?”

            Somehow Mignon had found her way from the corral through broken gate boards and into the barn, and proceeded to climb the narrow, steep wooden staircase leading to the loft. Whatever inspired her to climb the stairs will remain a mystery, but there she was, stomping around on the rickety upstairs floor. Not even a bucket of corn would coax Mignon down the steps.

            To make a long story short, getting Mignon down from the hayloft took a game plan with some good ol’ human ingenuity, modern medicine and horsepower, but not the four-legged kind. While Schmitt’s father, Alan Schmitt, was on his way over to the farm with a tractor equipped with a loader and a backhoe, Brian began removing boards from the south end of the loft. Alan Myers, a veterinarian that rushed over from Abilene, loaded a syringe with an elixir that would send Mignon to la-la land. Soon after the injection, Mignon wobbled and fell to the loft floor, luckily close to the opening.

            After lifting the backhoe bucket to the opening, it took several men to roll the heifer out of the hole in the side of the barn and into the scoop. Since Mignon wasn’t completely under anesthesia, the rescuers were concerned that she may roll out of the bucket. But as the bucket lowered, Mignon luckily waited until it was about two feet from the ground before she bailed off. It took another couple of hours for the effects of the sedative to wear off, and in the meantime, Mignon staggered around like she was drunk.

            This story was so interesting and delightful, and it is begging for a children’s book to tell the story. I’m so inspired, maybe I’ll do just that! But I’ll leave out the part that Mignon’s corral-mates also have dinner-plate names:  Hamburger Helper and Dinner.