The Very Mad Cow

My dad and I go out tagging calves every spring, starting in May and petering out by mid-June. I can't believe spell check isn't arresting me for 'petering.' Is that seriously a word? Adflk. Yep, spell check's working...

Aaaanyway. We sorted off a group of about eighty cows this year and kept them close to home. They are cull cows. They are bottom-of-the-barrel material. The very worst in the herd. Maybe you got that all from 'cull', but in case you didn't, they are the rejects of bovine society. To them we say; "I hate your stinkin' guts. You make me vomit. You're scum between my toes. Love, Alfalfa." You might think that wasn't really an appropriate place for a Little Rascal's quote, but no. Everywhere is an appropriate place for a Little Rascal's quote. Always.

Aaaaaaaanyway. Most of these cows are in the slammer for having terrible udders, one or two for poor feet, a couple for age, and a few for temperament. There was a time when we had cows to fit all of these criteria at once, but luckily we've been culling pretty hard lately. So anyway, one of these cows, around which this particular story revolves, is on death-row-prep for her udder, but we found out not too long ago that she pretty much fits the bill for temperament-cullage, too. See, spell check got that one, because 'cullage' is very not a word.

Anyway, now I will get onto the actual story, since you know the extensive backstory and accompanying tangents... Dad and I went out with Ol' Blue. That is our ancient old International truck. It bears the marks of extreme abuse. One day, I may write a post dedicated to this truck, but for now, just know that it is old, beaten up, and blue.

So, we go out with the truck into the pasture of the eighty cull cows and find the cow which, as I mentioned, this story revolves around. She had a baby. A baby calf. And so Dad had to tag it. We could see well enough that this cow was whacked, but since Dad is a little OCD about getting every single calf tagged, we went after it.

Eventually, we got lined up so that the calf was right outside Dad's window, right against the truck. Normally, Dad would jump out and try to grab the calf, but when he opened his door, the cow snapped. She started ramming pretty violently (I don't think one can ram something without it being violently, but anyway). Dad was trying to shut his door, but the cow kept hitting it right on the end, so that Dad was struggling to keep it from flying open (which it did, at one point, by the way. Which was terrifying, by the way). Eventually he got the door somewhat closed (only somewhat, because the cow had rather trashed it and it wouldn't latch), and the cow moved on to ramming the calf against the tire of the truck because, I dunno, she forgot how to cow, I guess.

So we're sitting there, unable to drive off because the cow has shoved the calf partly under the tire, not to mention she is killing it, and unable to grab the calf because the cow is AWOL and pretty bent on attacking things that move. At this point, between expletives, Dad suggests I go under the truck and pull the calf to safety. At first I think he's joking because his tone of voice was one like 'I'm making this crazy suggestion to be funny, but I'd understand if you took me seriously and actually did it.'

And so, of course, reading between the lines that were between the lines, I understood this to actually be my only option.

Actually, driving carefully away was still way higher on my list than crawling under the truck, but that option doesn't satisfy my father's tag-every-calf vendetta and is therefor not an option.

So, after a couple of “Seriously?”'s, from myself, just to make sure, I sighed, told myself it wasn't the calf's fault that my father was an idiot, and cautiously began my journey to the ground beneath the truck... for the dual purpose of saving the poor, still-being-viciously-assaulted-by-its-own-mother calf and indulging my father's vanity.

“Watch the cow.” I said. My game face was on. 'Cause this just got real.

Not trusting him entirely to the job, I kept my own eyes on the cow, too. But I also kept telling him to watch her. And to hold the brake. These two things became a mantra aimed at the man as I stepped out the door and whipped under the truck. Once I was under, I could see her feet.

“Good,” I thought, “I can still see her feet over there.”

Then her head came into view. Her very angry head. And very angry face. She began a fresh wave of attacks against her calf, so I racked up my courage (it didn't take long, there wasn't much present) and lunged forward to pull the calf underneath the truck. I was successful in my endeavour, and exceedingly proud for being so.

Until the cow put her head down again. The head with the angry face. She was bellering blue murder at me, mouth agape and tongue awaggle. Woah. 'awaggle.' I officially love that word that I just made up. I don't know if it accurately represents the cow's tongue because hers was stiff and curled a little; some flopping, but not so much waggling... still. I'm going to keep that word. It's the bestest word ever.

Aaaanyway, her exuberance (otherwise known as bat-crap craziness) freaked the heck out of me. I will tell you why. It is because Jurassic Park, both the book and film series, freaked the heck out of me. Let me tell you, when a creature looks at you with the amount of ill-will that that cow looked at me and that t-rex looked at those people in the car... you get scared. It is scary. In that moment, I was that little self-proclaimed vegetarian girl trapped and helpless in/under a useless vehicular device; all forms of adults, which might have made me feel secure, are dead or unable to reach me (actually in my case, he was sitting above me, drawing up a tag).

That cow, just like the t-rex, wanted to kill me. How am I to know whether or not she can flip a truck? At that point, I was pretty sure she could, so I remembered Michael Crichton. What would Michael Crichton do? I remembered that the t-rex couldn't see me if I didn't move... then I reprimanded myself. How could I be so stupid? Of course she would still see me; Crichton corrected himself in the second book that the holding-still trick was phony.

I still held still, though. I mean, if Crichton was wrong once, he could be wrong again, right?

But, alas, the cow was still going ballistic.

She still knew I was there.

Around this petrifying time, Dad had crawled out of the passenger door and was crouching under the truck, bidding me watch the cow's legs to tell him if she was coming for him. He asked if I would be able to tag the calf from where I was, but it was too crowded. He decided that I would have to watch the cow as he threw the calf into the truck box and tagged it there.

After one false alarm at my own itchy trigger finger (Dad can really move when I shout “SHE'S COMING!”), the calf was chucked into the box, tagged, then let down from the box.

Then Dad was in the box.

The calf was at the back of the truck.

The cow was also at the back of the truck, bunting her newly released and very much harried calf back underneath the truck.

And I was, of course, still too afraid to come out from under the truck.

By the time I'd re-racked my courage and pretended I had some grit where I didn't (because I didn't really have any other options, so I had to supplement), it actually wasn't any longer safe to make a run for my door because the all-sensing, powered-by-liquid-rage, t-rex-cow would have been able to see me darting out from either side of the truck from where she was (maybe not actually, but I wasn't interested in possible untruths at this point).

Dad was able to climb from the box, over the cab, and to the front of the truck. I don't know how that was any better than the box of the truck, but whatever. I'm not judging. He was saying that we'd have to drive away from the cow, so I'd have to get out from under the truck. I was thinking that he'd have to come up with some better options because that one sucked, but he convinced me that it would be safe to crawl to the front of the truck. What we'd do after that, I didn't know, but I figured if I got out and the cow came, I would be able to climb over the cab and into the relative safety of the box, so I obliged my father, if not with blind faith.

I started to army-crawl between the front tires, but there's not a lot of room there. I burnt my neck on something hot down there right about the time that Dad was giving the all-clear. The poor, miserable little calf had finally gotten out from under his oppressor(s) and taken off running, pursued by his gloriously rank mother.

I crawled out the side and got into the truck as Dad pulled out a hammer and began pounding his mutilated door straight.

In the end, we got the calf tagged, and the truck, cattle, and people, all came out alive and fully functional.