The Great Yak Escape

Twas friday, January 13th, the sun shone brightly on the chilly winter morning. I looked out the window and saw no black yaks in the back by the shack eating a snack. I figured they were in the corner of the yard I can't see from the house, where they often are. Several hours later I was putting the baby to sleep and I received a mysterious text message from a number I didn't recognize and it said plainly, "Did you lose your yaks?" and I knew this must be truth. 

I immediately thought they must have jumped the fence to the west where the yaks have befriended a white horse who lives there. I have seen them standing together and even nuzzling each other over the fence. I also knew that the fence on that side was pretty banged up and not very sturdy looking. I texted the number back, "Are you my neighbor with the white horse?" and the number answered "yes." 

I put the baby in the crib, sleeping soundly, and immediately grabbed the keys to the truck and filled the treat bucket with the yaks favorite sweet grains. I told Ganesh what was happening and we both felt panic. What do we do? How on earth do we get the yaks back? He had several meetings coming up and he really couldn't help, and someone needs to watch the kids. 

What do I tell my work? 

I don't know. Tell them the truth I guess. A few minutes later I heard him telling his colleagues "I have to cancel the meeting, my yaks escaped," followed by much laughter. He decided to stay home and I jumped in the truck to go to the neighbors house. I went to our neighbor to the west in a white house and a large "don't tread on me" flag, rang the door bell, and a young woman answered.

are you looking for your yaks?

yep!

they aren't here

huh? didn't you text me?

no I didn't text you, I saw it on facebook that someone was missing yaks. [this is the first I'm hearing about a facebook page for my city!] I recognized them from the picture because our horse seems to be friends with them. We love to watch them, they are so playful the way they run around your yard. We had a mutual moment of cuteness that the horse and yaks were friends. 

Oh I see. I have no idea where they are then. I thought they were here. I don't know how I am going to get them back.

My husband has a horse trailer if you need to use it. 

I might take you up on that offer. I'll let you know. 

We exchanged numbers and she wished me luck. So then I was really confused, who had texted me? I drove around looking for another white horse. I saw a man walking with a dog. I rolled down the window as I slowed to a stop. "Have you seen any yaks roaming around here?" He laughed. Yaks? no I haven't. We exchanged numbers just in case. 

I texted the mysterious number back and said 

Where are you? they described their property and I recognized it as what we affectionately call the donkey house. We have another neighbor bordering our property that has three donkeys. We hear them bray every once in a while. So I went to their house and rang the bell. The lady that answered said, yep there they are over by my barn. I put some hay out for them so they would stay put, but one chased me so I left them alone. I asked if there was a gate or something I could close them in. She said there was and I was welcome to close it, then come and go as I please and do whatever I needed to do to retrieve them. 

she said, I remember when my cow got out three times last year. I felt so helpless. So I know how you feel.

What did you do?

My neighbor helped me with his horse trailer. 

I think that is what I'm going to have to do as well, apparently he is the resident Bovine Retrieval Service. 

I closed the gate and shook the bucket of grains, and called their names. They couldn't care less. My yak relationship had been damaged over the previous few weeks. One evening when I went out there to give them their dinner. Dusty really came at me, charged aggressively with running steps. I stomped my foot and yelled NO as loud as I could. She paused, then charged again. I yelled again and had to back up. She charged again. It was terrifying. I quickly squeezed my way into the tiny coral where we keep the hay. Hands shaking. I couldn't go out into the field for a few days after that, and when I did return I brought the squirt bottle. I squirted her every time I even sensed her looking my way. But a few days of doing that, and they quit excitedly coming to me when I entered the field. They started hanging way back, and not coming to eat until I had left the area. Our fragile tapestry of trust we were weaving had been torn. 

I realized this was going to be very difficult. I texted the white house neighbor again and said,

I am going to need to take you up on your horse trailer and husband's help offer. 

no problem! He will be home from work in about an hour and we'll get the trailer over there. 

I went home and awaited the call. It would have been fun to be a fly on the wall for that conversation. Hey honey, grab the horse trailer, we need to help round up some yaks! There was probably a good laugh. When the time came, the dude backed up his trailer into the area where the yaks were. When they got out of the trailer I realized the young woman was pregnant. The yaks wanted nothing to do with the trailer or us. The dude swung a rope around to scare them into the right direction but there was just room much room for them to evade and run around. He made raspberry sounds and swung the rope and they were just freaking out. It was kind of awesome. They ran right at the young woman and she just stood her ground and I was amazed at her bravery. I said, please be careful. I don't want anything to happen to you because of my stupid yaks. You are so brave! she said, we used to have goats and those things were so mean. We had to get rid of them, we thought they might kill a kid if we weren't careful. This is the second time I've heard horror stories about goats. The three of us continued to try to coral them into the trailer but they just wouldn't go.

The dude looked around and found a section of cattle panel (heavy duty wire fence material) about twenty feet long and me and the young woman picked it up and held it by the ends, while he positioned the truck to be near a fence on the other side, effectively creating a large funnel into the trailer. He walked around with the rope some more and as they entered the funnel we slowly swung the section of fence around to close them in tighter and tighter to the trailer. Finally we were pressing them right up against the trailer opening and they still wouldn't go in. He had to start slapping them with the rope a bit and finally they went in. Dusty turned around and tried to wedge her nose out. He had to keep hitting her and pressing the doors to get them to close. Finally! the doors were closed and then they followed me in the truck back to our house. He backed up the truck to our little coral and we opened the doors and they came out. Safe and sound! The yaks were retrieved. They need to stay in their little coral until we fix the fence. The whole ordeal was quite stressful and took half the day. 

It was quite the wakeup call on many levels. 

1. The yaks seriously need to be tamed and I just have to bear up and do it. 

2. A pregnant lady is braver than me with my own animals. 

3. The yaks were aggressively cornered and hit repeatedly and did nothing to retaliate. Maybe they are gentle after all. One can hope.

Then I wondered, how did the donkey house get my phone number? Then I remember the facebook post. I went online and found a facebook page for my city. I looked at it and sure enough, the donkey house lady had posted "did someone lose these cows?" and included a picture of them. People responded with laughing emojies and a few sad faces holding hearts. This got me thinking, the donkey house thought they were cows, but when they texted me they said yaks. So I knew that my closest neighbor who is the only ones who know we have yaks. The donkey house must have called our neighbor and they must have told them and gave them our number. So this adventure took three wonderful neighbors' collaboration. I love my town!