I agreed.
Hank called.
“You’re educational material now.”
“About property rights?”
“About not entering livestock land.”
“Better.”
“The slide is called Respect the Fence.”
I smiled.
“Good title.”
“Thought you’d like it.”
A local reporter came later.
I finally agreed to talk.
He was young.
Nervous.
Kept looking toward the bulls.
“Mr. Patton, did you release the animals to get revenge on the HOA?”
“No.”
He waited.
I continued.
“I made a decision I wouldn’t repeat.”
That surprised him.
“Why not?”
“Because nobody has perfect control over a one ton animal.”
He looked toward Diesel.
“So you regret it?”
“I regret letting anger convince me risk was the same thing as a lesson.”
He wrote quickly.
“But you don’t regret defending your property.”
“No.”
“What would you do differently?”
“Call the sheriff sooner. Keep livestock completely separated. Let trespass charges teach the lesson.”
He stopped writing.
“That’s less dramatic.”
“Life should be less dramatic than headlines.”
He smiled.
“That’s terrible for my article.”
“You’ll survive.”
The article still ran with a ridiculous title.
WHEN COMMON SENSE HAS HORNS.
I complained.
Then cut it out.
Sarah would have made fun of me for that too.
The video traveled farther than I expected.
Millions of views eventually.
Memes.
Comments.
Farmers writing to tell me stories.
Suburban homeowners telling me their HOA nightmares.
One letter came from a woman in Texas.
Her father had owned cattle.
She wrote:
My dad always said fences don’t divide good neighbors. They tell good neighbors where respect begins.
I read that line several times.
Then pinned it above my desk.
Because that was the real story.
Not bulls.
Not Karen.
Not champagne flying through the air.
A boundary.
Karen looked at my fence and saw an inconvenience.
I looked at it and saw responsibility.
