“Guess what!” my older daughter said when I got home from seeing a play last Sunday afternoon.
“What.”
“The steer let me sit on him while he was laying down!”
On my camera I found photos of the steers roaming the yard (“They’re hungry, Mom”), and there was a large, squishy cow pie next to the front porch (lovely), but no picture of the steer-turned-sofa, so the next day when I looked out the kitchen window and spied my older daughter stretched lengthwise on the back of a steer, sunning herself, I snatched my camera right up.
![](http://jennifermurch.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/IMG_9052.jpg)
“Careful, Mom,” she said as I approached the fence. “Don’t startle him.”
The steer, for his part, didn’t seem to care one iota that a human being was draped across his back.
![](http://jennifermurch.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/IMG_9062.jpg)
![](http://jennifermurch.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/IMG_9054.jpg)
![](http://jennifermurch.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/IMG_9067.jpg)
“Make him get up,” I said, bored with the statuesque blob of beef.
Ever obliging, my older daughter began rocking back and forth.
![](http://jennifermurch.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/IMG_9089.jpg)
Nothing.
She kicked him in the sides.
![](http://jennifermurch.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/IMG_9090.jpg)
Nothing.
She kicked him harder.
![](http://jennifermurch.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/IMG_9091.jpg)
Nothing.
She rocked back and forth and jabbed him with her heels and—
![](http://jennifermurch.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/IMG_9093.jpg)
Whoosh! The steer stood up so fast that my daughter nearly tumbled over his neck.
![](http://jennifermurch.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/IMG_9094.jpg)
For a couple seconds the steer stood still while visions of bucking beasts and emergency rooms flashed before my eyes.
“Get off!” I squealed, but I needn’t have worried.
![](http://jennifermurch.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/IMG_9097.jpg)
My daughter had no desire to be catapulted facefirst into a cow pattie and had already vaulted off, landing squarely on her own two feet.
This same time, years previous: the quotidian (2.22.16), the quotidian (2.23.15), the quotidian (2.24.14), birds and bugs, bandwagons, cream scones, the morning after, and Molly’s marmelade cake.
One Comment
Kathy Gardner
I applaud your daughter's sense of adventure and even more I applaud your encouragement of it!