It was a
beautiful summer day in W Kansas. Temperatures were tolerable, low to
mid nineties, the wind blew just enough to keep us cool, and the sky
had the kind of hit and miss cloudiness to take the bite out of the
sun. It was one of those days you thanked God to be riding a horse in a
feed yard for a living, instead of holding down a chair in some office.
Earlier, someone had pulled a “calver”. This is a heifer that is in the
process of having a calf, but for any number of reasons hadn’t finished
the job on her own. The doc had checked her out and decided that she
wasn’t going to be able to have the calf humanely by herself, and she
was destined for a trip to Scott City to see the vet.
As our cow boss lined out the jobs for the afternoon, I was pleasantly
surprised that he wanted me to take her. I enjoy just about anything
that we do in a day’s time. But riding in an air conditioned pickup for
forty minutes, then sitting in the shade for an hour, then riding the
pickup and the air conditioning back, is about as far to the top of
pleasant as you can get. Added with the time it would take to load the
heifer, then to unload her and dispose of her calf, my afternoon was
shaping up for cake duty.
When I loaded the heifer, it wasn’t hard to notice that she was
seriously stressed. The heat, the strain from unsuccessful calving, and
her hormones kicking in, all left her in a “fight first and ask
questions later” frame of mind. I took an old broom and let her chase
it into the trailer. After closing the gates, I double checked the
latches, got into the truck and headed to Scott, the air conditioner
set on High.
The vet clinic at Scott City is in an old 1970s style building, on the
west end of town. It always seemed to me like the facilities for horses
and cattle have been added as an afterthought.
Have you ever watched five women work in one kitchen, or five men work
on a buddy’s car? There is a certain flow to kitchen and garages that
enables a newcomer to find tools and equipment without searching for
very long. The same thing applies to corrals. Those of us who work
around horses and cattle recognize the flow of a set of corrals
instantly, subconsciously marking the in and out gates, the way the
gates connect one corral to another, and what kind of work it will take
to get an animal from point A to point B.
The first time I brought a heifer to the vet clinic, I was surprised to
find that you have to hold your tongue just right to get the trailer
backed to the right spot to unload. There is no good in gate to the
whole set up, and the only part that flows really well are the alleys
from the loading gate to the vet’s chute. Once the vet is done, you
again have to do some tongue gymnastics to get the heifer out of the
vet clinic and back to the trailer.
On the other hand, the whole place is immaculate. White painted fences,
clean alleys, gates that swing and shut easily, and concrete that is
always clean, no matter what time of day you show up. The whole place
is surrounded by thirty year old cedar trees, rendering an old, but
still beautiful chute for semi trucks useless and providing wind and
sun shade for our hot blustery days.
The vet quickly determined a C-Section was needed and set to work,
while I found my spot in the shade and settled down to wait. He
extracted the calf, born dead, and put it into the wheel barrow for me
to take away. While he was sewing the heifer up, I came on a brain
storm… Rather than wrestling the wet, slimy calf into the back of the
truck, I would just stick it through the front trailer gate. Really
cool idea. The heifer can see her dead calf during the trip home, and
maybe make sense of all the weird stuff that’s been happening to her,
and I could get to it easily once we got back. Sometimes I’m so smart I
amaze myself.
Not too long after, Doc was done and we double checked to make sure the
gates were securely set to the trailer. Everything is good to go and he
lets the heifer out. She gets her feet under her, and comes out of the
Vet Chute looking for something to fight. Jumping from fence to fence,
I use myself as bait to lure her out of the building. Someone shuts the
door, and she’s now contained, but very uncooperative, in the pens
outside of the clinic. Three of us are trying to alternately lure her
and drive her towards the trailer.
She finally rounds a corner and gets a look at the open trailer, lowers
her head and ears a little and storms in.
I hear Doc say “Oh, Julie…” right about the same time she jumps out the
front trailer gate I’d left open.
I, myself, had just enough sense not to say any of the things that came
to my mind. So I silently watched the heifer run across the yard
towards the tree row.
I jetted around the horse pens to see if I could head her off and by
some unbelievable luck bring her back to the pens, hoping someone else
would be quick enough to open a gate, any gate, and maybe someone else
would be lucky enough to manage to turn her. As these thoughts raced
with me, I knew the odds against all of it. There is no gate going from
the parking lot into the pens, except for the one my trailer was
standing in front of. The heifer was way too wild. Any person unlucky
enough to be in front of her was going to get plowed over. Even if I
headed her off and managed to turn her, odds were that this was not a
good idea.
As it turned out, I was spared having to fear for folk’s safety. The
heifer easily beat me into the tree row and from there into a small
subdivision at the west end of Scott City. This subdivision was made up
of one or two acre lots, sporting a trailer house or modular home each,
sometimes a horse shed and some runs, sometimes just the buffalo grass
and a garden spot, neatly divided up into city blocks by dirt roads.
The heifer ducked through the tree row, and followed a dirt road west.
As soon as she was far enough away from anything on two legs, including
me, the heifer slowed down to a shambling walk trot. Doc had given her
a tranquilizer, and even though I had teased Doc about it not doing
much good earlier, I was glad that it was working a little now. I kept
track of her as best as I could, changing positions with her now and
again, to see if she would respond to me at all, but I got no response
from her. Doc and a couple of his helpers followed us, just in case
there was something they could do to help.
Soon it became obvious that there was nothing we were going to be able
to do, and Doc said:”I think you need to call some cowboys.”
Now on the list of things I wanted to do right about then, that was
probably the last one.
I am the only woman working on that crew. Additionally, for extra
amusement in the cowboy department, I’m blonde. It’s not “bottle blonde
for fun” or the “hair color only” variety of blonde, either. I’m blonde
to the bone.
Calling the cowboys and telling them I had made a stupid mistake would
come as no surprise to anyone. The jokes and teasing that awaited me
once we got back were enough to make me run through my list of people I
could possibly call twice, then once more just to make sure.
There was a list of folks I could call to help, who would bring horses,
trailers, ropes and possibly even dogs, who’d have this little mess of
mine patched up in no time flat. But those guys were all working right
about this time of day. Then there was the list of folks I could call,
who would be oh-so-glad to come out and play with a wild cow. They’d
show up in cars and maybe trucks, with cell phones, bring their cousins
and kids, and maybe, just maybe, get lucky and help me get her
contained somewhere. Chances were that this would take forever, and in
the end I would have to call the cowboys anyways. Still, I kept
trotting after that heifer, debating whether I should call someone
close and maybe helpful. Just not the cowboys.
The weather was changing from gorgeous to sweltering and humid, and the
thunderheads were building in the western sky. The weather forecast had
promised violent thunderstorms and possibly tornadoes, and it looked
like it was going to be right on the money once again.
Doc had run after the heifer all he was going to, and said “One of us
is going to call, Julie”
“Yeah, ok, ok… I’ll do it”
I dug out my cell phone, and called the cow boss.
“Uhm… Keith…” Best to get it over with, that way they would get here
laughing instead of ticked at what might’ve happened. “I left the front
trailer gate open and the heifer is running loose in Scott City.”
By the silence on the line I could imagine Keith’s reaction. It
would’ve included, but wouldn’t be limited to, a hanging head, slumping
shoulders, a hand whacking against his forehead and silent mouthing of
choice vocabulary.
The words I knew I had to say next just about brought tears to my eyes.
See, Looper is fairly new to the crew, and thinks himself to be of
unusual wit and comic entertainment. He never misses an opportunity to
razz me about little things that go wrong, usually for days on end. And
as far as little things that go wrong goes, this one was a doozey.
So I barely choked out the next few words afore I hung up the phone to
keep track of the heifer.
“We’re
probably gonna needs horses and ropes.”
I spent the next hour keeping track of the heifer. Folks would see me
coming along, and point and yell “She went that-a-way”. One good soul
manage to spook her through some electric fence into an enclosed lot. I
fixed the fence as best as I could before I followed the direction
indicated by yet another pointing arm, and located the heifer standing
in some weeds.
I left her there to calm down and to see what I could do to get her
captured better. Walking around the perimeter of the lot, I pulled some
junk wood together to make the appearance of a fence in a couple of
places and finally had a way to get her into a flimsy little alley and
corral. I decided not to try to capture her in the corral, seeins she
was sure to bust through it anyways. So I left her there, just out of
sight, in the alley leading to it.
Then I hoofed it over to the vet clinic to get the truck and trailer,
still maybe hoping I could solve this whole mess before the cowboys got
here.
In the meantime it started raining in true western Kansas fashion, big
ole splashy drops that soak right through to the skin. The thunderstorm
was about here.
The owner of the lot I was shamelessly using without his permission
came home from work and immediately set to helping me fortify the
corral. I apologized profusely, but he waved it off. Of course such
things happen, no, it’s not a problem, no, he doesn’t mind the rain,
but that’s all the panels he’s got, the trailer won’t fit in there
anyways, we might as well sit it out, let the heifer cool down.
I had a couple of cans of pop in the truck, and we sat in his saddle
shed and visited while we waited for the cavalry.
Before long, Keith arrived with Looper and Emmett, the other big
hambone of the crew. I hung my head, knowing that this was going to be
laughed about for the next six months at least. Maybe, if I got lucky,
they’d slow down after six months of entertainment, but it was sure to
get rehashed for years.
They sat in the truck waiting for the rain to slow down a bit, then got
out to look things over. Everyone had the same idea I'd had. Maybe,
just maybe we can get the heifer into that corral and then load her
from there. So we spread out to be in the right spots, not too
threatening, but still kind of easing her towards the corral.
She took one look at us, snorted a couple of times, shook her head at
us, and bailed through the hog wire fence, chasing Keith down a draw
and into a pile of junk. There he unceremoniously tripped and face slid
to the other side of the pile. Once he was down, she changed directions
and took off across another little bit of pasture, into a deep draw.
There she stood looking around, not willing to climb up and out of it,
her sutures probably getting noticeable by now.
Looper and Emmett simply turned back to the trailer and unloaded their
horses.
They found a way into the pasture by letting down more electric fence,
and tried to haze her to a better spot for roping. Keith and me, though
footback, tried to help as best as we could, while maintaining a safe
distance now.
Soon enough, the two super loopers had her where they wanted her.
Looper swung his rope and I found myself fervently wishing for him to
miss. A miss would give me a small amount of defensive ammo in the days
to come. But “blonde to the bone” is another way of saying “No luck at
all”. He shoots, he scores, and the crowd goes wild.
Emmett on his horse and me on foot hazed the heifer along, while Looper
used his rope and his horse to guide her towards the trailer. Keith had
opened the gate. Amazingly, the heifer took one look at the trailer and
jumped in, just like she had been captured and loaded this way all her
life.
The rain started coming down in earnest now, and we took the rope off
the heifer, and loaded the two horses into the trailer I had brought to
town.
There was nothing in the world that would make me get into the same
pickup with Looper and Emmett, so I went over to the owner of the lot,
giving the two jokers time to buddy up in one of the trucks. I thanked
him one more time for the use of his property and promised to replace
the hog panels she’d torn up. Then I got in the truck with Keith, hung
my head, and said “It ain’t easy being me”. He was good as gold, just
laughed and let me know it was ok.
“We’re
probably gonna needs horses and ropes.”