Out Our Way: Don't mess with Mama

Out our way, there are two critters even ole Doc backs down from: a bull on the fight and an angry mama cow protecting her calf. I have seen what a bull can do — Charlie and I found one in an arroyo with a broken leg after another bull went after him in rut season. He was so torn up we had to shoot him and later haul out the carcass with a big truck. Although much smaller, I have also seen a cow on the fight, and, between the two, I think the bull is less terrifying. I know I have shared this story before, but even experienced rancher sometimes need to be reminded, “Don’t mess with mama — or, more to the point, don’t mess with mama’s baby!”

I was visiting a friend who owned a fair-sized spread just off the Chippewa Cree reservation in the Bear Paws. Most of the herd was down aways in the draw where we were doing the gathering, but one stray managed to go the wrong way and ended up by the corral next to the ranch house. Mama started bawling for him and he answered, but stubbornly refused to come back to the herd. So Mama went up to get him.

The rancher thought this was very funny and started hazing the calf — not to drive it back to the herd, but just mess with it. The calf was frightened and confused and raced every which way but the right one while the rancher just laughed and kept hoorawing it. Mama arrived to take charge, but the rancher wouldn’t stop panicking the calf. Mama let out a loud bawl, but the calf was now too frightened to pay attention and the rancher was enjoying himself too much to care.

Mama bawled again, but this time there was a threat in it. She lowered her head and shook it, and it seems to me I remember her stamping or pawing the ground a bit. But the rancher ignored her — until she charged! Fortunately it was close to the corral and the rancher was able to jump up and climb over the railings before she got him. The rancher’s wife came out and had seen the final few moments, and when it was over she started yelling at her husband, “How dumb are you? The rankest greenhorn knows you don’t mess with Mama!”

Thanks to the work of renaissance artists and the inadequacy of English to translate the full meaning of the original Hebrew and Greek texts, many folks picture God as a man with a flowing white beard. But God does not limit us to that view and uses the metaphor of the angry hen protecting her chicks as a good image for the Almighty.

If you have seen a hen when her chickens are threatened, or a cow whose calf is being hassled, that is the image God wants you to think about in your times of trial and testing. History has shown over and over again you don’t want to “mess with Mama.” Read Psalm 17: 8 “Keep me as the apple of your eye and hide me in the shadow of your wings!” As long as David stayed with the Lord, no harm could touch him. It was only when, like the wayward stray calf, he left God and went his own way to destruction.

How often I called to you and sought to enfold you as a mother hen gathers her chicks — but you refused and went your own way and found destruction. Abandon Mama and the predators will quickly close in. Return to Mama and they will run the other way. God gives you the choice. The Enemy knows they “don’t mess with Momma” They hope you are too foolish to know that.

Be blessed and be a blessing!

Brother John

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The Rev. John Bruington is the retired pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Havre. He now lives in Colorado, but continues to write “Out Our Way.” He can be reached for comment or dialogue at bruingtonjohn@gmail.com.