I cannot exactly say that I am surprised.
One of my very first memories is of the time our pet racoon got out of his cage, and roamed free.
I was probably only a toddler then, but have a very vivid memory of watching it grab a banana for itself and eat it in front of me.
When I was around my youngest daughter’s age, he caught me two baby chipmunks who had fallen from their nest in a redwood tree.
They would have died if he hadn’t captured them and brought them home.
For years they ran on a wheel in my room until we later set them free.
There were the ostriches we had that got loose one Easter morning after I was already dressed for church.
I’ll never forget him yelling, “Don’t let him kick you! Just grab him by the neck and shove it down towards the ground!”
Let me tell you: Fear over death by ostrich will get you ready for church.
There was the horse he bought me,
the emus and roosters I avoided,
the snake in a bucket up in the barn,
the rabbit we thought was a he for many years that later we found out had been a her.
Growing up my dad taught me so many things about living life on a farm.
You would have never known that all of these animals were, instead, living in the pastures around a small two bedroom duplex, and that instead of a farm truck, we just had a hatchback car.
I tell you this background so you’ll know that I can’t exactly call it “shocked” when my dad texted the other day as I sat in the drive through of a fast food restaurant chain waiting to order lunch for my daughter, Paige.
“I just picked up your birthday present,” the message said at first.
“Any chance I can drop it off sometime today?”
Gifts from my dad have ranged over the years from an adorable baby rabbit to a flea infested recliner he found along the road.
I never know exactly what it will be.
Where it stops, nobody knows.
“Surely he’s learned to leave the recliners” I hoped, and I texted him that I wasn’t home and told him when I would be.
Honestly, I thought it had to be another rabbit, as the last one he had brought the girls had just recently died tragically, but when he next asked,
“Do you want a picture? He’s about to be an orphan. He’ll die if someone doesn’t love him,”
I did not know what I was about to see.
What came on my screen as the picture he sent loaded was a tiny calf standing next to a dying mom.
My dad manages a giant ranch that sits overlooking the ocean. Every day he tours the land, builds, and fixes things, and on that day he’d come upon a scene that broke him:
A brand new baby calf (less than a week old) standing next to a mom that lay unable to move, frozen.
The baby stood beside her literally crying tears, kneeling to try to still get milk from her.
She was still alive, but couldn’t even raise her head.
My dad thought she’d be gone within the hour, so he let the owner of the ranch know what he had found, but the owner had washed his hands of her and told my dad he could do what he wanted with her and the baby. Callously said to maybe just dig some holes.
Cue my dad’s text to me.
This man knows how to tug at your heart strings.
How could I have said no after the picture?
What I did say was that I had no idea what to do with a cow, and he texted back,
“Step one – Ask Paige. (9 year old daugher)
Step two – Don’t ask Justin.” (husband)
So he wanted to bring me a COW for my birthday.
What could possibly go wrong?
I had had a lifetime of training, after all.
As he wrangled it into the back yard not an hour later, I stood kind of stunned wondering what on earth I was even doing.
I wondered how I’d explain THIS ONE to my husband, and entertained the idea of going and buying a big red Christmas bow, saying nothing and just letting him discover it looking in our sliding glass door during dinner.
I wish I had recorded to call to my oldest daughter that night telling her I had some news.
I wish I had forever frozen in time the way it felt to say,
“So…….Long story short, we now have a cow,” because what makes this story funniest is that that neighborhood I grew up in all those years ago is still the neighborhood I am living in now.
Me and my husband, our three youngest girls, two dogs, three cats, a guinea pig, and now a COW live in the country still in a duplex. Not the same one. I mean, we’ve moved over a couple fences, but I think you get the gist.
We are the only house with kids, nerf guns, trampolines, and sibling squabbles, and the only house whose backyard sounds like THIS.
The first morning after the cow was brought, and he had lay by the fence mooing for his mom, our neighbor, Maggie, known by many of you as the neighbor who once witnessed me pull an accidentally thrown away frozen pork loin out of our garbage can, and hold it in the air and call to the kids to go fire up the oven….
The neighbor who I had to wake up at 1am once with my hair in what I like to call “White Coolio braids” to tell her my cat was trapped in her car…
came walking towards the fence that divides our properties gingerly as I attempted to tug a calf from underneath our trampoline, and said over the fence,
“Ah. It makes so much more sense now!”
She said her cat had refused to come out of her closet for the entire night the night before.
Accustomed to us now after three years of us living here, It probably took her less than 4 minutes to know it had something to do with us, I’m sure.
I bet Maggie loves living over that fence.
For Christmas I’m going to have her a “#blessed” sign made up.
When my dad first mentioned the calf he said to me that “Even if I could keep him for one night that would be good.”
I had agreed to that, but then the next morning awoke to three of his workers hammering stakes, and playing loud Mariachi music.
They built a whole professional shelter and paddock in my field.
They just descended and, like mice crafting a ballgown, whirled, and *POOF*
created it.
It’s like…One day I was just homeschooling, and cooking, going about my regular life,
and the next day I lived on a full farm.
In the three days I’ve had him now I have researched everything from cow diarrhea to weaning to castration, and I don’t think I was ready to talk about castration to a nine year old who will definitely use everything I just said in multiple poorly-timed conversations later on.
And,
now that we have a calf,
I think maybe he’s lonely, so – what do you know –
I’ve already looked on the board at the feed store to see if anyone has some baby goats for sale.
It’s like I am in the book “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie,”
only make that cookie a barn.
Now we pull on galoshes and mix giant bottles that contain 4 oz. of Pepto Bismol.
We spread hay. We give sponge baths to calves.
This is just who we are now;
And miracle of Christmas miracles, the mama cow is still alive covered in a blanket on the hillside.
As I’ve taken care of the baby, my dad, proving himself ever the MacGuiver, has done things like making a homemade tube feeding system.
He constructed a sling to move her with his tractor, moved her, and covered her with a shelter. He’s been soaking oats in water overnight to make them sludge and that is how he has been feeding them to her.
We’ve got a whole operation going on; Him with the mama, and me with the baby.
I never would have thought this is what I’d be doing, but I also never said I wasn’t crazy.
The most amazing thing is what it’s done for my nine year old daughter who has been homeschooling since the start of the pandemic, and has been feeling so lonely.
This calf is a new purpose.
I’ve seen her come alive.
Something else to do besides video game playing.
Last night after a day of medicating, washing, and feeding I was struggling to get my galoshes back on with one hand, bottle of calf-milk in the other.
The struggle was extra hard after such a long day.
I felt beyond exhausted.
I’ve lugged stuff, and taught school, and driven kids, and cooked meals, and spread hay, stayed up late doing research.
They’re going to dedicate a commemorative bench to me at the corner feed store.
But Paige stood there watching me getting ready to work more, and suddenly she gasped.
I looked up to see her whole face light up with an idea.
“I know what to get you for Christmas now!”
I thought with a smile,
“What will CHRISTMAS be if A COW was for my birthday?”
But I knew her idea without her saying it at all:
Slip on rain shoes for trudging to the cow more easily.
On every girl’s list, I’m sure.
All the rage.
I didn’t let on that I knew what she was thinking, I just said, “You DO?! OK;”
And though I was so worn, I watched her as we walked back to the corner of the field to the spot where the calf lay.
She had pulled on her own boots, and had taken the bottle from me.
When I mentioned that maybe we should have brought a flashlight because it was almost dark, she said, “Oh no! I got one!”
She then switched on a hidden one that was hanging from the belt loop of her pants, and she called out as she ran leaving me behind,
Up ahead in the dark,
“See! I came back, Baby!”
In her voice there is a song now that is the same one my voice has sung from when I was her age.
It’s the song you sing when you learn to care for living things,
and what better lesson could I be teaching my daughter this year than that one specific thing?
A Christmastime Calf.
I could see her smile even in the darkness.
There is a nine year old girl that has been positively lit up by him,
and watching her learning to love animals and the world around her the same way I learned to is making it worth every bit of hard work I will put in.
This article was written by a guest blogger. The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not reflect the opinions of Bob Lacey, Sheri Lynch or the Bob & Sheri show.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
