Chapter Fourteen in “Decades with the Squad,” by my late father, William Palmer Jervey, Jr.

Firemen frequently rescue cats from trees and dogs who have gotten their heads stuck somewhere. Rescue squads are not ordinarily involved with animal rescue. The major exception to this, in my experience, was when we rescued a herd of cattle.

The James River was having one of its tantrums and had overflowed its banks. A local cattleman had around fifty head of cattle stranded on a rapidly shrinking high point of land two hundred yards from the mainland. The water was about six feet deep and a four-foot barbed wire fence was just below the island that the cattle occupied. This fence, being perpendicular to the river’s current, posed a hazard to swimming cattle. The fear being that they would get tangled in the wire and be at the mercy of the rising waters.

We crossed over to the island in a motorboat, posted one man at the upper end while my companion and I went to the lower end. Our scheme was for us to drive the herd up to the point man who would in turn prevail upon them to make a left turn and enter the water, while the farmer stood opposite on the mainland calling and throwing corn in the air for them to see. An enlargement of the old carrot and stick procedure. It worked and they entered the water without mishap. However, it soon became obvious that the current would have them on the fence long before they reached the mainland.

My companion, who shall here be known as Ferguson, was not idle. He leaped into the motorboat and roared into the diminishing gap between cattle and fence. Here he zoomed in circles, shouting and waving his arms. This performance accomplished its mission, and in ten minutes the cattle were all safely on the mainland, sauntering away as though nothing had happened. I’m happy to say that Ferguson promptly came back to the island and rescued us, as the island was six feet under water by morning.

The farmer made a nice donation to the rescue squad, and I have a yarn to tell my grandchildren.