Those Who Live in the Country 25 



OXEN CLIMBED A TEEE 



Scientists and psychologists are, I believe, not 

 agreed about the exact working of the mental 

 processes of the lower animals, but I am quite 

 fixed in my belief that those young oxen were not 

 wholly in love with mankind at that moment. 

 After a spell the outfit was headed towards the 

 barn. Needless, perhaps, to state, having gath- 

 ered their *' second wind," the young ''critters" 

 moved with undiminished speed. They took no 

 notice of a sapling that stood directly in their 

 course in one of the fields. They ran fair onto it 

 and it bent down before the yoke. Their speed 

 was so great that they were carried several feet 

 along that bent-over tree and suddenly found their 

 front feet touching nothing. There was that team 

 of oxen standing on their hind legs in the snow 

 with their forward ends up in the air. It 

 was a critical moment, as the uplift of the tree 

 brought the bows of the yoke so tightly against 

 their necks that they were nearly strangled. One 

 of the party was detailed to bring an axe from 

 the nearby bam and a few swift strokes at the 

 root of the tree let the animals down on all fours. 



It was a quite demure and seemingly quite tame 

 pair of young oxen that returned to that barn- 

 yard that never-to-be-forgotten Christmas Day, 

 and that joy-ride furnished a theme for many an 

 animated conversation among the young folks of 

 our household for weeks afterward. 



