You know, I'm really beat, all dragged out, and there's still more Fitzmas decorations to hang in the DUmpster, but I'm just wiped, and so should probably hit the sack again.
Last night, Sunday night, circa 9:00 p.m., the neighbor from down the road six miles stopped by, insisting he needed my help. Being a nice guy, I said, yeah, sure, no problem.
The problem was, he had a cow that was about ready to give birth, and it looked as if the calf was going to try to come out feet-first, which isn't a good thing.
Now, I was really confused as to why someone would think me a suitable bovine assistant gynecologist; it is true that I grew up in the Sandhills, but I was a town boy, not a country boy, and even though such things took place all the time all around me, I never paid attention.
"Well, I need you to stand by, in case something goes wrong," he said.
The stark fact is that cattle, especially confused or enraged ones, can kill people.
Now, this was a truly ludicrous situation. I am deaf; if something went wrong, how was I in any position to get help (seeing as there was nothing I could do myself)--summon 911 by shooting up flares in the skies?
Anyway.
During our ride to his place, he explained the situation, but I already knew the situation. The farmer is a young farmer, about ten years younger than myself. His wife and the infants were visiting the in-laws in Omaha. The farmer is his own man, he owns his own place without family or banking encumbrances, but his baby-boom father, getting up in age, is a domineering old coot about the same age as gator or the mountain man primitive, who tries to run his youngest son's life and farm.
The father of course is an expert on dealing with calves being born backwards, and his father was available although eleven miles away, but my neighbor didn't want to deal with this; he wanted to handle this his own way. Growing up around cattle, he was familiar with the procedure of dealing with like crises, but had never in his life handled one himself, the old man taking always charge.
Among the miscellaneous background, my neighbor was an airplane mechanic in the U.S. Air Force right out of high school (at the age of 17 years) for about four years, after which he attended the University of Nebraska, getting a degree in mathematics and chemistry. He moved back here about two years before I ended up here.
He was the youngest in a family of five, the oldest brother a physician in Oregon, the oldest sister an R.N. in Iowa, another brother generally considered the most successful farmer in all the counties around, and a sister an R.N. in California. He would have called the second brother, but the second brother is 86 miles away.
He just did not want the old man controlling and managing the situation.
And so I was "it."
We reached his farm, and he drove up to a structure that, really, isn't a barn; it's more like a very large metal shack (about the same size as a barn). It was dark, of course, but the inside of the building was lit up as if mid-day. There were two very large sliding doors, about half the surface-area of the structure, wide open, to the north and to the south.
When we got out of the truck, before heading to the distressed animal, I yanked a 24-pound sledge hammer out of the bed. Now, I am a strong person, and a 24-pound sledge hammer is no light thing, but this was a cow; my idea was that if trouble happened, I could at least stun the cow for a half-second or so, giving me time to think of something else.
The laboring cow was tethered to a post near the center of the inside of the building.
There are few things in life more distressing than seeing a poor dumb animal in distress, and one can do nothing about it.
Since he had been gone (picking me up) for about twenty minutes, and much could have happened in those twenty minutes, my neighbor immediately jammed his hands inside the cow, to see if the time was right for "turning" the calf indoors. He decided no, it was getting closer, but it wasn't quite ready to be turned.
So we walked back outside. My neighbor doesn't smoke, but he asked for one of my cigarettes anyway.
He did that most curious thing everybody does, who bums a cigarette off of me; upon discerning it was an ultra-light 100, he broke off the filter, and smoked it filterless.
We talked about women. Being a married man, my neighbor was full of women problems.
We both agreed the problem is women think things should be the way things should be.
Men on the other hand think, yeah, it would be nice if things were the way they should be, but it's rare for things to be the way they should be, and so it's just better to take things as they really are.
My neighbor probed the interior works of the cow every twenty minutes or half an hour, apparently depending more upon the sounds she made, to determine when the time was "right." I have no idea what kinds of sounds the cow made, but I did have the impression the "barn" was full of noise.
Shortly after 1:30 a.m., he determined it was just about time to turn the calf, but unfortunately he wasn't going to be able to turn it without it getting all tangled up in its cord.
He told me to go inside the house, into the kitchen, and bring him out a bottle of whiskey.
I assumed he wanted the whiskey as a fortifier for himself, he being under almost as much distress as the laboring cow. There were six bottles of whiskey, ranging from one 500-ml plastic bottle price-tagged $2.79, on up to a 750-ml four-sided glass bottle price-tagged $42.95.
I decided he should have the best stuff, although it was a pain getting the cap off.
He arched his eyebrows upon the sight of the bottle, but concentrated more upon the cow and its soon-to-emerge calf.
Now, I was always standing circa 25 feet away, so as to not be close, and in the way. And besides, that was where I had parked the 24-pound sledge hammer.
So I'm not exactly sure what he was doing, when he was probing and guiding.
About 3:30 a.m., the calf started emerging, head-first.
Of course, it looked nothing like a calf, or even like a head, as it was coming through.
In fact, it looked very like Skins's island, an amorphous blob.
The inside of the building had a really bad stench, and I had to exit a couple of times; if there had been something in the stomach, I would have probably disposed of it, but there was nothing in the stomach, so no damage done.
In some minutes further on, the calf had finally emerged, looking nothing like a calf or any other living thing.
To me, it looked dead. It couldn't possibly be alive, no signs of life at all.
My neighbor cut some things off the Skins's-island-like amorphous blob, and dumped perhaps two teaspoons of whiskey into it. At this liquid, the blob perceptibly, but nearly imperceptibly, shuddered and convulsed. My neighbor gave it some sort of massage-job for a couple of minutes, and then got up, saying that, well, it was all going to be okay; it looked good.
To me, it looked as if the most pathetic thing I had ever seen in my life, next to the intellects of primitives.
He dumped the rest of the whiskey in the bottle onto the ground, it of course having been rendered unusable for human palates because the opening of the bottle had come into contact with the inside of the mouth of the calf.
The cow, shrunken and shriven, was slowly, inch-by-inch, released from the tether, and once loose enough to get into the vicinity of the amorphous blob, did what is apparently called "bonding." After she was totally free of the rope, and sitting on the ground alongside Junior, my neighbor and I again went outside, to smoke and chitchat. It was great weather, clear with temperatures in the high 40s.
About 6:00 a.m., when the calf started looking as calves should look, it was all over, and I came home.
