The Gambler

Well, I was accosted by a beast again, so I guess that means it’s time for me to make a big deal of it.

Here’s how it went down...

Scratch that. Here’s the not totally relevant back story to update you on my life...

So this past couple of weeks has been pretty hectic. First of all, we’ve been getting all the calves branded and cows vaccinated. That’s about 300 calves I have personally pushed and shoved through an alley and into a tipping table. Thanks to my muscles, I did not get kicked once. That’s not really because of my muscles, but I wanted to work a thanks to my muscles in there somewhere. Just so that you, too, could appreciate my muscles.

Anyway, along with running calves through, I also pushed the cows through, though that did not take as many muscles. It only took some street smarts, to trick the cows into thinking they are going the way they want to. Street smarts may not be the right term, but it is a quality I like to tell myself, and others, that I have.

380 is the number of cows/heifers that I pushed through in this manner.

I guess an honourable mention should go out to my wingmen, Mom and Dad, who may have also played a part in the workload.

This is the first year we’ve branded with such a skeleton crew, since all the unfavourite children are gone now. To replace all of those children, Dad bought a new calf tipping table. I wonder how it would feel to be effectively replaced by a hunk of clanging metal. I wouldn’t know. I shall have to ask my siblings.

Anyway, Dad was able to catch the calves, flip, needle, and brand them, then let them go. He even managed not to drop the end gate of the tipping table on my head, which was most impressive. I was most impressed, anyway.

While he did this, and I pushed calves up, Mom was part-way down the alley, holding a group of calves in place so I didn’t have to walk so far every time.

It was quite a system, and we got the job done in good time!

A final seven calves remained at home until this morning. They were heifer’s calves, so we were letting them grow up a bit before hauling them out to pasture.

This is where the relevant(ish) narrative begins...

Early in the morning, before we ate breakfast, we saddled up some horses and went down the road to bring the yearling heifers home. It was a really nice morning; the sun was rising in a clear blue sky, birds were chirping, and the air was sweet and cool. But the grass was soaking wet with a heck of a dew, so I did not care for the beautiful morning in light of the fact that I was soaked to my knees just from catching my horse.

My morning was not improved by the horse that I caught.

Now it’s time for a tangent called Barb.

Barb is a new mare we got this spring. She is Dad’s mare; I wash my hands of her. Except I can’t really wash my hands of her because I still have to ride her.

I named her Barbwire because I was always asking her,

“Barb, why’re you like this?”

“Barb, why’re you in such a hurry?”

I had to explain that here because not enough people ask me about her name and give me the satisfaction of explaining it.

So, anyway: Barb.

Barb and I get along when we, and everything else, is only walking or trotting. At those times, she has a mind to listen and obey and can be rather sensitive, which is nice. However, when stuff starts running and leaving her behind, she can’t handle the anxiety. Inconsolable, the poor little mare refuses to listen and sticks her nose in the air to ignore me. Sometimes her front feet follow. It is not a good time.

Yearlings do not walk or trot. Yearlings are what we were moving this morning.

Running after the playful yearlings is a headache enough, but fighting with Barb all the way made it an unpleasant way to pass the morning. That and wet feet. The nerve of the universe, sometimes, I tell you.

But wait. There’s more.

We put the heifers through for the vaccinations, which went well, and then we had to do those final seven pairs (which I mentioned about two tangents ago).

Since it wasn’t worth it to lug the big tipping table into place, we just loaded the calves in the stock trailer and branded them in there. This meant that Dad flipped them and Mom and I were to hold each one by hand. The good thing was, 6/7 of the calves were pretty small. The bad thing was that 1/7. And it was a real bad one. It was so big because it was actually an earlier calf, not one of the last born as the others were. The reason it was at home was because it had broken its leg and had to be casted. Up until this morning, our interactions with that calf had been pacified through the use of tranquilizer. This time, Dad diagnosed that the best thing for it would be to replace its cast with one that would fall off soon, and just let it be free with the herd in the pasture. This would have to be a sans-tranquilizer operation, since you can’t just dump a tranqued calf out in the summer sun.

So what I’m saying is, Mom and I had to hold this big sucker down for about 20 minutes while it was uncasted, recasted, and branded.

I’m not gonna lie, I haven’t held a calf down like that for a long time, and I wasn’t at my professional best. There were times when I was rolling around the crap-encrusted trailer floor, alternately dodging a sharp little cloven hoof and a blunt-force-trauma-causing cast. Sometimes, with Dad’s help, I could regain my lost ground and get the calf pinned again. Sometimes we just had to let it up and re-flip it.

Now, since you might be feeling sorry for the broken calf, let me just remind you that I had wet feet, a stubborn horse, and had to wrestle calves. Besides, that calf will be fine.

Eventually, we got the cows done and loaded and we were off to set them loose in their summer pasture.

Okay, now we’re into the part of the story that actually pertains to why I started writing this in the first place...

We unloaded the pairs in an alley of sorts. It was closed off on one end and the trailer was at the other. We were hoping to hold the 7 pair in this little alley so that they could find each other before we let them into the real world. Dad went to the end with the gate and was trying to let out cows that had their babies with them. Unfortunately, first-calf heifers are not the brightest socks in the spoon drawer. In their eagerness to possess a calf, they will just follow whichever one passes under their nose. They also feed whichever calf comes up and sucks.

While Dad was fruitlessly waiting to let pairs out, I was at the other end, trying to keep things in the alley.

To set the scene, there is the rear door of the trailer behind me, mostly filling the gap that I am tasked with guarding. To my left and right, there are 6-foot page-wire fences, which have an electric wire running along the middle. Unclimbable. The only really climbable thing is a panel beside the trailer.

Number 64D had never stood out as being a menace before. At least, not to my knowledge. As I watched the gap, however, I didn’t like the way she was looking at me.

Here’s how it went down. I know I said that before, but this is the real deal.

64D came to the edge of the small group of heifers and eyed me up.

“I bet you I could chase you,” she said to me, through eye contact of course. I am fluent in eye contact. It is the language of anxiety. The song of my people.

Anyway, by way of reply, I took a small step forward and broadened my shoulders. This conveyed the message, “I see your bet, and I raise you a tiny step forward.”

64D retreated and circled in the herd for a little bit, then came out past the edge of the group.

“I bet I could chase you and you would run.”

64D was rapidly gaining confidence. Perhaps she was absorbing it as it ran out of me.

I picked up a rock.

“I SEE YOUR BET TO MAKE ME RUN AND I RAISE YOU A STONE!”

I was shouting through my eye contact. For this narrative, you can picture that looking like a steely glare. But you should probably know that, in fact, it looked more like my eyes were bugging out.

64D went back into the herd. I thought I had beat her, then. I thought,

“She doesn’t know I couldn’t hope to hit my target with this rock. She doesn’t know how nervous I am. I am smart. That cow is dumb.”

Unfortunately, I may have left my eye-contact connection open via the furtive glances I was casting her way. Because I think she heard me.

64D came well out of the herd, then, very purposefully striding towards me.

“I bet I could chase you. I bet you would run. I bet you would not hit me with that stone.” She was closing the gap, but still assessing; not charging yet.

“You’re bluffing!” I cried, holding my rock up. It is I who was bluffing.

“I will hit you with this rock!”

She did not stop.

To my credit, because I will always find some way to give myself credit, I hung in there until she was about five feet away.

Up until that point, 64D and I had maintained eye contact, along with a steady flow of,

“I will chase you”’s

And

“You will not”’s.

At that critical point, though, my poker face no longer fooled her. She put her head down, snorted, and lunged.

When Kenny Rogers wrote the song, The Gambler, he was probably actually talking about cows.

You gotta know when to hold ‘em,

Know when to fold ‘em,

Know when to walk away,

Know when to run.

I ran. Oh boy, did I run.