The calendar was approaching the first of April. I was about 30 days into calving season, and nearly two-thirds of my cows had already calved. I’d traversed this far down the familiar, yet always unique, annual path with what I’d label as exceptional luck. To be sure, just like every year, there had been a few surprises and unexpected and minutely troubling turns and potholes in the road, but I’d avoided the overwhelming disasters like unending bitter cold weather or the awful battles with the liquid death otherwise known as a scours outbreak.
So I wasn’t too worked up when I had to get a cow in to stitch up a minor two-week postpartum uterine prolapse. Other than my patient’s post-operation red-hot hatred for any human on foot and inside her personal 100-foot radius bubble, things were going quite well on that day. As I backed the trailer up to load the cow and her calf so I could take them to a pen down by the house where she could convalesce, I noticed in my mirror what appeared to be a cow casually lounging in a far corner of the field, her 10-day-old calf by her side. Since I could see her calf was not brand-new, I reckoned the scene to be just a tad off-kilter.
I jumped on my horse and trotted down to get a better look. As I approached, the cow shook her head, staggered to her feet and attempted to flee the scene. I instantly recognized her as old number 30. Her short ears, a result of her first days as a baby calf born on a freezing cold late February night a dozen years earlier, made her an easily recognizable marker cow. Like an Elko County buckaroo at the end of a three-day bender, she staggered and tripped through the field and down into a swale in the middle of the pasture. Obviously, something was amiss. Though she’d been perfectly healthy just one day earlier, I figured she was on the verge of checking out of mortality.
I looked for her the next two days, but I never did find her. Since I only wanted good news, I convinced myself she must have recovered and thus blended in with her 350 herdmates so well that I couldn’t pick her out. A couple of days later, however, in an apparent bid to mock my tracking abilities, my dad – with his worn-out 87-year-old eyes – noticed the unmistakable image of a big black dead cow belly up on the creek bank. I don’t know how I missed her, but there was little question she’d been there for a day or two.
The next day, I spent an hour or so riding through the cows in search of the orphaned calf of old number 30. Of course, the calf was at just the age to be deftly elusive and plenty wary of any half-baked cowboy with a rope in his hand. I outwitted the wily little bugger and flipped a Houlihan over her neck after putting the sneak on her as she was hiding in the middle of a group of cows gathered around a pile of freshly fed hay.
I loaded the calf up and stuck it in the lead-up alley to the chute in the corrals by the house. I figured that was about the most airtight pen on the place. The last thing I wanted was an escaped leppy calf on the loose. That evening, when I went out with a bottle to hopefully feed the calf, I discovered that she’d slipped through the narrow opening where the gate hadn’t been shut tight. I recognized the guy who didn’t shut the gate when I’d looked in the mirror that morning. Round two to the calf. Luckily for me, the baby didn’t find an escape route to parts unknown, and I was able to find a pen that could hold her.
I knew the baby had been stealing milk from other cows for a couple of days after her mother departed for the great beyond, so I was optimistic, in a pessimistic sort of way, that she’d take right to the bottle. The pessimistic part of my optimism proved to be the reality of the matter. The calf was wound tighter than a Victorian spinster, and though she was small enough I could easily keep a hold on her, she refused to suck from a bottle.
I let her go hungry overnight, hoping she’d be more amenable to my offering the next morning. I forced myself to muster up some rare patience as I tried for 35 minutes to get the calf to take the bottle, all to no avail. I eventually surrendered and fed the ungrateful little pill with an esophageal tube feeder. I observed that very same ritual twice a day for five days before the calf showed even the slightest bit of cooperation. We eventually came to an uneasy truce where she’d finally drink from the bottle, though she never really took to me. Although, for the most part, I showed unusual restraint in my interactions with Orphan Annie, it could be that she somehow understood the names I’d call her as I’d mutter under my breath. I don’t know why she refused to accept that I had her best interests at heart.
I couldn’t help but notice several parallels between the behavior of an irrational baby bovine and how a good share of my own race reacts to life’s challenges. So often, it seems, we refuse to accept logical nourishment to the soul offered by those who only wish to help. Pride, like the ignorant hysteria of an orphaned calf, can easily blind us to empowering wisdom. I’ve spent a lot of time and effort running from the warm milk offered in the outstretched hand of a friend. And eventually I learn that it sure beats the tube.
