My $2 Million Bull Broke Through the Fence Into the Convent Next Door. The Nuns Refused to Give Him Back

“You can’t vote on my bull, Sister.”

“We vote on everything,” she said. “It’s how we’ve run this convent since 1911.”

My foreman, Eddie, made a sound that might have been a laugh and turned it into a cough.

I tried the halter. Thunder looked at me. Then he put his chin back on Sister Agatha’s knee and sighed.

I tried the grain bucket. He ate the grain and didn’t move.

Eddie and I spent forty-five minutes trying to persuade a twenty-two-hundred-pound bull to walk. The sisters brought us coffee. Thunder fell asleep.

My livestock insurance agent called at seven.

“Colm. Tell me he’s not off your property.”

“He’s in a convent.”

There was a long pause.

“Your policy covers him on your land and in transport,” she said slowly. “If he gets hurt anywhere else, we’ve got a problem. And if he hurts someone, that’s your liability coverage, and I’m going to need a very long form.”

I called my vet. Dr. Tom Whitacre drove out, checked Thunder from nose to tail, and pronounced him perfectly healthy and perfectly content.

“He’s not sick, Colm,” he said. “He’s happy. I don’t know what to tell you.”

By noon, I was sitting on the garden bench beside Sister Agatha, defeated.

“Sister. What do you want?”

She folded her hands.

“Mr. Brady, may I be honest with you?”

“Please.”

“We are six women with an average age of seventy-nine. The chapel roof leaks. The property taxes have doubled. The diocese has told us that unless we can support ourselves by spring, they will sell this land and move us to a retirement home in St. Louis.”

She looked at Thunder, sleeping peacefully at her feet.

“And your bull,” she said, “is the first good news we’ve had in two years.”