Bill's Rural Legends
Part 3 - Life and Death on the Farm
... continued from Part 2.
I got my calf home and was informed that he was so young we still needed to bottle feed him. OK, at one point during the winter you had to navigate through a maze of boxes in my kitchen to do most anything, because I had nine bottle baby goats to take care of (much easier to keep the goats in boxes in the house instead of running out to the barn every 2 hours for the first 2 weeks). I immediately ran over to the feed store and bought baby cow formula, giant bottles with nipples and also the anti-shit meds the feed-guys recommended to me. An hour later I pulled into my drive and saw my new calf laying in the pasture, dead as a door nail. What the fuck?? I called the vet and he told me, "Well you take your chances with those sale barn calves. Next time bring it to me first and I will give it a once-over for ya!"
OK, so baby cows drop dead for no reason? Basically, yes. A couple of weeks go by and I get another little calf from an auction in my town. Paid 20 bucks for him and took him straight to the vet for the check-up and the shots that set me back another $40. Got him home, made him a bottle, made the hole in the nipple too large, gave him pneumonia because too much formula went into the lungs. Two days later… another dead baby cow.
by
Barbed Wire Bill
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What is this, 1967?
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Someone the wife works with told her the problem was that I was buying these cheap calves, and that her husband raised them and would set me up with one that was already off the bottle and ready to graze on the pasture - all for only $200. We figured, what the hell, this one might just live, so we went for the deal. Thing went fine for about five days – the calf was grazing and seemed fine. Then I went out in the morning of the sixth day to feed Dwayne, but he doesn’t get up to greet me as usual… he was just laying there. Oh fuck! I ran to him and picked him up. He was alive, but not in good shape. I can't get hold of anybody with a truck, so I load him into the back of the Escort and take off for the vet. At some point during the 10 mile drive I notice that other people around me are pointing and laughing. Now, I'm a big ugly fucker but I've never had this happen to me before, so I pull over to see what the deal is. And there is Dwayne; standing in the back, licking the windows like a tard on the short bus. We got to the vet, and after the examination it turns out that this breeder I had gotten him from was a lying piece of shit, and had never given Dwayne his shots. Therefore my calf was dying from White Muscle Disease. Fuck. Another one bites the dust.
Farm Lesson 2: Never name livestock. Names make them pets, not dinner.
At the beginning of May, another co-worker of the wife's had heard all the tales of woe of dying cows and decides to be a good person. She told us to come out, pick out a calf, and then they would raise her with her mom until she was old enough to be over all the childhood aliments cows suffer from, and the sale price would still be for that of a young calf. Great! We went out and selected a pretty little red and white calf. The calf’s parents were all out in the back pasture, locked up, while the calves were getting their shots, so I never got to meet mom and dad, but it didn’t matter. I knew that in a few months I'd have a heifer cow.
In the meantime I decided to try and buy an auction calf one more time. One Thursday, near the very end of the auction, a skinny knock kneed little bastard was up for bids, and nobody was bothering to even screw with him. The poor bastard looked like he was about half an inch from death, but the price was right; a dollar fifty. I went into the office to pay for him, with the change I found on the floor of the car, and the lady working the counter told me, "I hope he lives long enough for you to get him home". Bitch. I loaded him into the hatchback of the Escort, drove home and released him into the pasture. I went out to feed him a couple of hours later and there he was, staring at me, ready to eat. Holy shit. He's still alive! Even better, he didn’t die, at least not for awhile.
At this point I had about 20 goats, a couple of sheep, a horse, several dogs and cats, peacocks, geese, chickens, turkeys and ducks. I had my dream nearly fulfilled. Old Barbed Wire MacDonald had a farm. The calf was growing just fine. The only animal-problem at this point was that fucking Angora billy goat. His horns had grown even bigger and he spent hours every day sharpening them against metal fence posts and trees. The stupid bastard would use his horns to tear up the fences and then all the goats would make a run for freedom, leaving me to scurry the countryside for strays. He'd tear them down and I'd replace them. That was the deal we had. Now, goats like to climb, and the highest thing for them to climb around the farm was my new car. Nothing like getting a brand new car and going out to see hoof scratches all over the finish. Fuck that. After reviewing all the options we decided to place strands of electrical fence around the pasture to keep the goats away from the fence.
Towards the end of July I got the call that they were going to deliver my heifer calf that day. I was totally elated! My cute little girl was coming home! They pulled up with the trailer and backed it up to the gate of the pasture. I asked, “Why don’t you just let me lead her out of the trailer and walk her to the gate?” The old cowboy laughed and told me to open the gate. When they opened the trailer's door, standing there before me was 500 pounds of pissed off cattle. Oh shit! She had grown… a lot! My son was supposed to be working the pasture gate, saw her and took off. In typical cow-fashion the damn cow bolted straight into the open and was gone! She just took off running. In the end it took a posse of four cowboys on horse back, two in a truck, three on foot and a 5 mile round trip to get her back. But we did get her back safe and sound, and the cow was ready to kill and maim. I figured I have a way with animals, so with some time I would be able to tame her down.
The next day I tried to go into the pasture to feed the critters and didn’t get but 5 feet in before I was charged by Pointy Death and chased back out. I ended up having to move my $1.50 calf to my corral just so I could feed him, and not worry about dying. And the problem with the goats escaping had gotten worse. I called the local animal shelter to get a herding dog to help me move the animals as needed, and maybe help to keep the goats from escaping. They had just gotten a beautiful white merle Aussie Shepherd pup in, and if I came and got her right then and there I could have her for free. I jumped on it and went and got her. She was already 5 months old and I was told she was great at working stock. She was going to be perfect. We got her home and she started rounding up the goats right away, chasing them into a pen, and I was duly impressed. I called her back to get her away from the goats and to pet her and give her a treat, but she didn’t respond. So I had to walk over there and pull her back.
I worked with this dog every day, several times a day, for nearly a week before the wife said: "Bill, don’t you thing something is wrong with your dog?"
"No , she just doesn’t back off when I tell her to. She will learn."
"No, have you noticed that her pupil on one side is messed up?"
"No, I haven’t."
"Look at her!"
Oh shit. The pupil in her right eye was oddly shaped. We did some tests and it turned out that she was blind as a bat in that eye. But that still didn’t explain the not-listening part. So another trip to the vet and $200 bucks later we found out that she was stone deaf in both ears. My great and wonderful herding dog was flawed. When she wasn’t working with me, all she did was sleep and run in a figure 8. My yard, still 3 years later, has an 8 inch depression where she ran that figure 8 for hours on end. Because of her handicaps, I eventually sent her to a school in Montana for deaf dogs to learn hand commands. She was there 2 full days before she escaped, and she was never heard from again.
With the goats now increasingly escaping and getting into trouble on a regular basis, and having lost one that was crossing the road, we had to get up that electric fence ASAP. A trip to the feed store and several hundreds of dollars later we are set. All, except for… what are we going to do about the big cow? She was now about 600 pounds and growing, and she didn’t have one bit of niceness in her. Mean as a snake. We decided I'd lure her to the corral with some grain and lock her in until we were finished. All of my animals are grain whores. They'd walk through fire to get a handful of oats rolled in molasses. The cow ran into the corral and I shut and locked the gate. It was a good four and a half foot solid metal gate. We were safe in the pasture, and got to work. We started around 4 pm and were about three quarters of the way done, when I noticed the cow running from one end of the corral to the gate and back, but I thought nothing of it. The cow was nuts. The next thing I know my wife shouts, "OH MY GOD!" and I look over to see a quarter ton of beef flying through the air as the fucker has leaped over the gate and was now in the pasture… with us.
Oh shit.
We had to get that fence finished, and I didn’t wanna die, so I tell my son to go over to the corner the cow was in and just keep graining her a little at a time to keep her away from us. He went over and started handing her some grains, and the wife and I got back to work, stringing the last of the wire. I have my back to the pasture, facing the fence - stringing away, when the wife taps me on the shoulder. I turn around and look up, and there is that big bitch; staring me straight in the eye, not even three feet away. I look over to where my son is supposed to be, and he is nowhere to be found. The cow is snorting and pawing the ground and I'm stuck in a corner of the pasture. My only option is to try and outrun her, which wouldn’t be very smart. Now the cow is shaking her head up and down, edging closer. The wife and I are definitely stuck. Stuck in a bad place. The wife is calling for the kid but he isn’t answering. So, out of options, I step up and slap the cow in the middle of the forehead with all my might. I guess she didn’t expect me to fight back so she took a couple of steps back to rethink how best to kill me. At this point we are both screaming our heads off for the kid to come throw her some grain and get her off us. He is still nowhere to be seen. The cow is now doing this dance in front of us. Like some cannibal around the stew. Oh, fuck!
So I punch her in the nose.
Man, did that make her mad.
I scanned the area for a weapon to beat her away from us with, but there is nothing. The pasture gate is 150 yards away and she is between us and it. The fence to my back is five feet tall and has three strands of barbed wire around the top. Now going through the barbed wire doesn’t bother me (for all the obvious reasons); a few cuts, scrapes and maybe even stitches don’t compare to what this cow is about to do to us. It's quickly coming to that now-or-never breaking point, and I tell the wife, "I will distract her - you make a break for it!"
And she says, "But I cant run! I'm having my period!”
I turn to look at her, to give her a nice big "What the fuck does that mean right now?" when, as soon as I turn my head, the crazy cow charges, hitting me square in the chest, bouncing me off the fence. More of a warm-up shot than a death blow. The wife is crying and I can’t breathe as I just had the wind totally knocked outta me, when I hear my son's voice:
"Were you guys calling me?"
"Yeah! Throw her some grain! She is gonna kill your dad!"
"Uh, OK."
He shakes the can we grain her out of, and she takes off running for her goodies, and we make our escape. Once out I grabbed the kid by his shoulder and before putting my foot in his ass, I asked him where he had been.
He looked at me, dumbstruck, “It was 9 and Simpsons were on and I figured since it was almost dark she wouldn’t see ya over there by the fence. And I couldn’t hear you over the TV"
He didn’t get to watch TV again for the rest of the month.
The summer went on and the cow and I reached a deal: she didn’t fuck with me while I was in the pasture, and I didn’t crack her over her thick skull with the Louisville Slugger I'd taken to carrying with me while feeding the damn animals. The electric fence worked like magic and there were no more goat tracks on my car.
September came and so did my birthday. Now, for some reason I was a total prick that day, and the wife and I had a running fight from the time we got up and all throughout the day. But, out of obligation and duty, she still took me to my favorite expensive place for my birthday dinner. We argued the entire meal and I started to throw back the beers. We finished and headed home, with me a little more than half drunk. She noticed that the controller on the electric fence was flashing an alert that the fence wasn’t working. I asked her to unplug it and the kid and I would walk around it and check for breaks or shorts. I told her I would call “OK” when she could plug it back in. We walked all around the fence and got to a spot near the barn, out of her sight, where I noticed that the fence was grounded out on the metal fence near to it. To get to that area of the fence I had to go over a little two foot high gate into the kid goat pen. My 100-year old drunk fat ass decided to jump over the gate, instead of just stepping over it, and I fell flat on my face. When I fell I got tangled up in the fence wire and thus pulled it clear of the grounding metal part. My son said, "Dad are you okay??" and I yelled back "YEAH I'M OKAY!"
Of course, the wife heard me yelling “OK” and plugged the fence back in... zapping the living hell outta me.
Between jolts, I'm screaming to dear fucking God turn it off, but there was no stopping it. Instead of my wonderful son rushing to tell her to turn it off, he was laying on the ground, laughing his ass off. I finally managed to pull free, with my hair on end like a goddamn cartoon character. When I got back to the fence-plugger wife to chew her ass, her defense was that she couldn’t hear me yelling over the kid's laughther. She figured we were having a blast. Yeah, a blast all right.
In the middle of October, my buck and a half calf was now a 300 pound mountain of meat and still growing. While he was sleeping in the barn one evening I went in to check on him. One of the dogs went up to him and sniffed him while he was sleeping. That woke him up, and startled him so bad, that he jumped up and ran head first into a concrete support pole, breaking his neck.
I was sad to see him go but he was very tasty.
Thanksgiving rolled around again and we were invited to some friends’ house for dinner, and everything was awesome. No sooner were we done eating when my cell phone rang. It was my neighbor calling to tell me that my big angora goat had tried to get through the fence and had gotten himself tangled up in barbed wire, a tree, welded wire fence and electric fence wire. When I asked, "Hey, can you help me out and get him loose?” the reply was a big "Fuck no, that bastard will kill me!" So I rushed home with a promise to the wife to be back as soon as possible. I got home grabbed the wire cutters, unplugged the fence (live and learn) and set out. The big mean cow had fucked with me for the last time, a month or so earlier, and had recently paid a visit to Mr. Butcher, so at least I didn’t have her to worry about. I got down on my belly and started cutting this stupid bastard goat loose. Besides the fact that I had all the other goats either standing on me or chewing my clothes, things were going pretty well. With him all cut free, except for one wire, I leaned my head up, looked him straight in the eye and made sure to remind him, "You don’t hurt me and I don’t hurt you. Deal?" I hadn’t even gotten half the words out of my mouth before… BAM! Yeah, you guessed it. The bastard head-butted me smack in the middle of the forehead. The wife came home 2 hours later to find me lying on the couch with a black eye and a nice goose egg on my head. The goat was sold the next day.
It's been 5 years now on the farm, and animals have come and gone. Everything from pigs that escaped and rooted up my neighbors’ entire front yard, to turkeys that attacked me on site and would wait on the front porch for me to come out. I thought I'd seen everything, but somehow I don’t quite believe it. Not yet. As I look out over my pasture it seems pretty empty these days, with only nine big horn sheep, a pony and a horse left.
And on top of my car; the very first goat I ever bought, smiling down at me.
