This might be one of my best posts ever. Please read.

Saturday evening I participated (as the photographer) in a de-horning. Yes, that's right, a de-horning, and no, I don't know if that's a word. John, his brothers, and his dad all worked together to take the horns off a calf. First his dad lassoed (I didn't know people other than cowboys did that) the calf so they could take him away from his massive, fully grown steer friend. While they did this John got caught in the rope and almost lost his leg. Then they pulled him with the four wheeler into some little thingy that would hold him in one place (not John, the cow). After that they took their nifty cow de-horner tool and chopped his horns off! (I have been told that the blood can shoot up to 10 feet when they do this. Thankfully for my stomach it didn't squirt this time) All the while the calf is mooing and we (my sister-in-law and I) had to make sure the big cow (with BIG horns) didn't decide to be a good friend and come take us out. After they chopped the little suckers off we had to wait for him to stop bleeding. While we waited, the dreadful time came and the big cow did start acting like he was coming to help his buddy out. We got pretty scared and had to start chucking the babies over the barbed wire fence so they would be safe. (Not really, we carefully helped all the little kids over). But in the end we didn't have to worry because John got the gate closed so the large bovine couldn't get to us, the calf was released with his newly hornless head, and everyone was happy. I got a lot of pictures, for posterity, as my mother-in-law requested, my nephew Hyrum got a new toy (one of the recently removed pieces of cow head), and John got out with both his legs. What a good day.