A little “poddy rustling”
We had a new neighbour on the southern boundary.
He kept a different breed of cattle than ours. We loved the Herefords; red brown with white faces very pretty animals. Our neighbours cattle were a mixed breed of Brahman cattle with long faces, a hump and quite aggressive.
It happened that one of his heifers went through the fence into our property. Peter saw her when he was checking if all the animals were OK. He did not like riding a horse so made his rounds usually on the small motorbike belonging to the girls. He tried to maneuver her towards the fence where he had opened a space to let her through. Yet the furious heifer turned around and charged him full speed on his bike.
She did some damage to the bike, fortunately not to Peter. She did not want to leave so Peter left her in our property and closed the fence.
Later when he saw the neighbour he asked him if he missed a little brown heifer. The neighbour said yes and asked where she was. Peter said that he tried to drive her back to his property but that in the process she did some damage to his motorbike. Then the neighbour changed his tune and didn’t want to acknowledge the heifer.
So the little heifer, she was a pretty girl, stayed with us.
A year later this neighbour said to Peter, I think I saw one of my heifers at your place. Didn’t you say that you saw one of my little heifers on your place? Peter said, oh no, that was a year ago and your heifer went back to your place, so I don’t know what you are talking about. And that was the end of it. Peter was not giving him back this little beauty which he had fed for the last year. The neighbour had never paid for the damaged motorbike. So we were more or less quits.
Cattle rustling was going on all the time on more remote properties.
