A steer showed up on Cheryl Richards’ property June 21. Although lots of animals turn up on Richards’ land, having a bovine make an appearance was a first.
What do you do when a cow appears in your yard?
One couple in the Heisson area of Clark County had to face this quandary as a cow — a steer, to be exact — made a guest appearance on their property, prompting a frantic search for the animal’s owner.
Coming home from a night out, Mark and Cheryl Richards discovered a surprise visitor at their property. Mark had noticed the animal. Keeping their notoriously nosey dog in the car, Mark approached the animal, petting and talking to it.
The animal was smaller than standard cows and shaggy. Cheryl believed it was likely a Scottish Highland breed. Once the ice was broken with their new visitor, Mark went inside to get a rope to tether the animal.
“The cow decided it wanted none of that and took off,” Cheryl said, as the steer went to a nearby meadow.
Mark was able to tie the rope’s end to a tree to keep the animal in place, solving one problem while the couple moved onto another issue, that of finding the animal’s owner.
The calls started with nearby farmers and people the Richards’ knew had experience with large animals.
Mark scoured the neighborhood looking for its owner while Cheryl contacted Clark County Animal Control which she said were not able to do anything about the steer due to its size. Cheryl ended up putting up posters of the animal to help in the search.
That Thursday was particularly hot, but Cheryl said the steer was taken care of with water and shade. The cow kept up its friendly demeanor, acting more like a pet than someone’s livestock, she said.
“The cow seemed quite comfortable grazing in our meadow,” Cheryl said.
Finally, the Richards got a call from the cow’s owner that evening, putting an end to the 24 hours of mystery.
Although it was the first time cattle had made an appearance on their property, Cheryl said they have seen other oddities coming out of the woods. Apart from local wildlife she recalled a time when a large white animal stopped by.
“I thought, ‘my god, is that an albino bear?’” Cheryl said.
It turned out the mystery beast was man’s best friend — a pregnant Great Pyrenees dog.
Although errant cattle are more of an oddity, animal lost-and-found is an issue in the growing county. Most of the posts on social media sites such as the “Lost and found pets of Battle Ground, Yacolt and surrounding areas” Facebook group feature dogs and cats, though there are the occasional farm animal such as a chicken, or in the case of a June 24 post, a goat the poster called “Crazy Jeff.”
Groups like the lost and found pets one on Facebook may be good for community support in tracking down owners for lost animals, but they don’t go to the local authority when it comes to animals in Clark County.
Clark County animal control and code enforcement manager Paul Scarpelli said such social media conversations have “good points and not so good,” adding although Facebook posts do spread awareness, the conversations usually do not get picked up by any official agency.
“More people are using social media when an animal is seen as running loose. However, they are not contacting us and we don’t monitor that medium,” Scarpelli wrote in an email. “Thus we are not aware of the problem and can’t respond.”
In conversations with animal control staff, Scarpelli wrote that factors such as mating seasons can come into play. Scarpelli said residents inexperienced with keeping livestock can also lead to animal escapes, with proper fencing being paramount.
“Part of the solution is educating the animal owner,” Scarpelli wrote.
He said animal control would be happy to provide that but it requires initial information — the owner, the animals and their problem — in order to get that education.
For some cases, animal control maintains a call list so they know about animals in specific areas to help with retrieval.
In the case of the mystery steer, Cheryl said the animal had been peering in their bedroom window the night after its discovery, adding she knew that by the evidence the animal left behind on the deck, using it as a restroom during its brief stay.
“The cow was looking for companionship,” Cheryl said.
