A cow goes walkabout

After a day of intermittent sunshine and cooler, cloudy periods, a storm cut a swathe across the sky around 4.30 or so yesterday afternoon bringing very strong, squally winds and rain. We could hear the wind approaching up the valley and thousands of leaves showered down like confetti.
You can get a sense of the strength of the wind if you have a look at the tops of the pine tress bending.

Anyway, all this is setting the scene...we had a big Dorothy and Toto get swept away to the Land of Oz kinda storm last evening.

So this morning I took down a biscuit of lucerne to give to the boys who surprised me by their absence in the small pen in which I always feed them in the morning and the afternoon. While I thought this was odd, I had other things on my mind like feeding The Girls and shovelling soil into the new vege gardens, to be overly concerned. Anyway, I did my chores and began filling in the first of the vege gardens when I decided I'd better go check to see that the boys were OK, given the big storm of the night before. I located Baxter by the fence that runs parallel with McGuinness Road on the eastern edge of our property but no Dexter. Baxter was looking worried (if bovines can look worried) and staring wistfully straight across the fence and towards the road. 'Hmm' I thought. 'Where the hell is Dexter?' So, I trudged down the paddock and then across and up the other side, but not a single other belted galloway did I see.

I thought I had better check the very extreme corner, near to where I found Baxter, before alerting Steve to this piece of news. While Dexter was not there, I did spy him. Out of the paddock and happily grazing on some grass by the road. I knew that all I had to do was offer him some lucerne hay and he'd follow me down to the lower gate which he did, so getting him back was no problem. But how he managed to get over the fence remains a mystery.

There is no visible evidence anywhere of him pushing through the fence so all I can think of is that during the storm yesterday afternoon he freaked and jumped the fence. Now I know this possibly sounds a tad far-fetched, but it's the best explanation I can come up with at this stage. It is a tad disconcerting, however, because it means that, at least in the case of that rascal, Dexter, the perimeter fence is not 100% secure.