Side of Beef

The Saturday before last, a semi-truck driver tried to turn around in a parking lot near my house. I've never seen more than four cars parked there comfortably at time before so I'm not really sure why he thought he was going to be able to turn an eighteen-wheeler around in there.
He ended up ripping out two utility poles and tearing the meter box off of my house (and the sign shop's next door) leaving the whole block without power.
The best part is that he then tried to drive away from the scene. He didn't make it far considering he had part of a light pole and several severed power lines hanging off the back of his truck. The cops caught up to him down the street trying to drive the wrong way through the park.

As it is January in Illinois, we really needed power. It wasn't below zero that night, but it was cold enough that we'd be mighty frigid by morning if we didn't get the heat back on in the following hours.
We were informed by the police the the meter box was our responsibility and we could take it up with our insurance (and presumably the truck driver's insurance) to get reimbursed. My husband called the electrician and he was out here doing his thing within 20 minutes. Impressive if you consider it was 9:30 on a Saturday night.

As he banged around the outside of the house, yakking it up with the power crew fixing the power poles, the Mister and I mused just how much this bill was going to run us and how we could convince our insurance agent that our vehicles were somehow damaged by this. We got our power back up a couple hours later and spent the next couple of days anticipating the bill.

It came a week later: $800.14.

Panic subsided today when the truck driver's insurance agent called me to get a copy of the invoice. I knew we had a little time before the electrician would come calling for the money, but I didn't know how quickly we would get the check paying us back. Luckily they are on the ball over there at Great West Casualty.

He was a nice man, very pleasant on the phone. "Was there any damage other than the meter box?" he asked. "I can have a check out to you as soon as I have a copy of the invoice." he offered.
After a little chit chat about fax numbers and check-wrting, out of nowhere he says,

"A six-legged cow was born in Columbia."

"Uh, Missouri?" I asked.

"No, Columbia Columbia." he answered, pleased he had shared such a juicy piece of information with me.

I wasn't sure where he was going with this. I didn't know what to say except

"Sounds delicious."

"I'll have that check right out to you, Mrs. S. Have a great day."