The phone rang at 7am yesterday morning.   It was our neighbor Mr Wachs (pronounced "wax"), reporting that the cows were out. I called Cody.  A few minutes later Cody called me and asked if I would come down and open the wire gate that leads into Rudy's place.  Rudy is Wach's neighbor to the south.  It wasn't just one or two cows that were out, it was pretty much the whole herd.  Cody thinks that one of the calves, closely followed by his buddy in trouble, a slightly younger calf; got out onto Wach's place. These aren't little calves, the bigger one probably weighs 350 lb, and is clearly a teenager with a big attitude. The first calf's  mamma, who is a good cow mamma, couldn't get through the same place, but did push through Rudy's fence in order to stay with her calf.  The rest of the herd followed. 
Cody pushed the herd back to Rudy's fenceline where none of the cows walked the extra 30 feet to the gate, they all climbed back through the fence.  I knew I'd seen two calves on the Wach's property but by the time the rest of the herd was through I could only see one, who I hazed back through the fence.  Cody and I stapled up the old, old fence to old, old redwood posts.  There was field fencing below topped with two strands of what had once been barbed wire.  The barbs are now so rusted that they are little more than nubs on the wire. There were some new  t-posts that had been installed the wrong way around, making them almost useless.   We then added two or three vertical wires between each post, a lot, considering that the line posts were only about 8 feet apart.  The vertical wires help tie everything together and make it hard for a cow to get their head between the wires.  Once a cow can put their head through the wire they will use their weight to push on through, so stopping the head is important. 
Cody has some fairly serious medical stuff going on and was headed for UCSF in San Francisco for further testing. 
I got another phone call last night around 8pm.  It was Mr Wachs reporting that the last calf had shown up and was safely back through the fence.  With that in mind, this morning, a lovely cool foggy morning (pretty much unheard of in July), I took the chainsaw down, cut up one of the PG&E trees and went on to the Wach fence.  If those calves hadn't been trouble-making teens they wouldn't have challenged that fence, but it was -just- decrepit enough to let them through.  I added staples and lots of verticals.  It should be good for a few more years. 
Now I need to mount the chain saw sharpener.