Greeted by a Eight Hundred lb. Cow

      We would travel together as a family on assignments that Dad had in connection with his work at BYU.  On one such journey as we were driving along a winding two lane road through pasture lands in Central Utah, we came over a dip in the road and were horrified to find an 800 pound cow planted squarely in the path illuminated by the car’s headlights. 

       Traveling 60 mph and being literally upon the animal in the split second after the first sighting, there wasn’t time to swerve to either side.

      In those frozen moments when Mom and Dad could see the awful sight of the car crashing head-on to this stationary barrier, they could only visualize calamity falling upon the whole family.  It was a moment of great terror.

      Dad’s instinctive and immediate reaction was to apply the brakes as forcefully as he could, but to his dismay and dread he could not remove his foot from the accelerator!  The car ploughed head-on into the massive heifer.

      The car’s force lifted the full 800 pounds up and propelled the animal completely over the top of the car.  Suddenly the obstruction was gone.  Not understanding how something so grave could be over so quickly and with the air filled with the screams and cries of the young occupants, Dad brought the car to a stop, expecting the worst.  With astonishment, he found there was not a single injury among all the family!

      Soon the Highway Patrol arrived and the heifer was located.  The trooper was utterly amazed when he compared the condition of the car–the front end being collapsed but the windshield intact–with the huge size of the animal.  Past experience had taught him that the animal most often is thrust through the windshield or lands on top of the car crushing the roof.  He could only deduce that the speed of the car had given the extraordinary lift to the animal and saved the family from serious, perhaps deadly harm.  At this moment, the full realization of his foot restrained from applying the brakes came forcefully to Dad and he recognized that a divine care had been exercised on the family’s behalf.  We have never left off feeling gratitude for this blessing of protection on that occasion.