~ highway to Saskatoon ~

8:30 a.m.

On the weekend, a calf (the huge one I saw pulled by three men out of its mother’s behind) got sick with what appeared to be “the scours.” Its front legs, already bowed, became wobbly so it had trouble standing. It shit a stream of watery yellow that pressure-arced four feet from its ass. There were deep hollows in front of its haunches, and it looked dozey. I said to Loverboy “It looks dehydrated.” But his dad said it wasn’t, because its nose was still wet, so they didn’t treat it for that until the next day, when its nose dried out.

Sometimes I walk with L when he goes through the barnyard to look at the cattle, to see if anything else is ready to calf, and to check on the sick baby. It’s always a lesson; he talks about what he is looking for, how the cattle behave, what’s been done and is yet to be done. There must be a teacher in him somewhere. There is always the odd fact that sparks my interest, some little detail I never knew about cattle.

Mostly I like the way he talks about their characters, and to them with such affection. “You old grizzly bear,” he says to one cow recently added to the herd.
“Is she mean?” I say.
“No, but you have to watch her.”

One pen is full of feeders. They rush up to the fence all pretty-eyed and curious when you walk up. Feeders are young cattle that are being finished (grain fed?) for slaughter, and are about a year old.
“They’re not scared of you,” he says, “and that’s the problem. They want to play with you, so they’ll butt you, knock you right over.”
One of the bigger ones comes and puts its head down in front of L. “You want a scratch, don’t you,” he says to it, reaching out to scrape up and down its bony head with his fingertips. “You like that, eh. Feels good.” To me, “We kept this one over winter, thought it was too small to sell.”

The sick calf has been put inside the barn to separate it from the other cattle, which can be too rough on a sick animal. We kneel beside it. L rubs its body, while I scratch its head.
“You hafta get better, buddy,” L says, “I love ya, you know.” He and Pa have given it shots of penicillin. They have mixed up some sort of broth and poured this into it by inserting a long tube down its throat.

Last night I said “You should take it to the vet. It’s not getting better.”

In the evenings they bring its mother in and put her in a stall where she can see her baby but is not with him. She is a bit “rang-y,” L says, meaning she is not calm and sensible, and might step on him, and could very likely get in the way when they go to treat the calf again at midnight.

I say “You should put them together. You know what happens to sick babies when they are separated from their mothers. He needs her. And maybe it would encourage him to stand up, get some milk into him.”
He hasn’t stood up for two days, and his suck, when L puts his finger into the calf’s too-dry mouth to check, is weak.

“I know,” he says, “ it would comfort them both,” and calls out to Pa whether the two could be put together in a larger stall. But Pa wants to leave them as they are for the night. This morning, L tells me they have decided to take the calf to the vet.

He invited me along, but I have just gotten up and don’t want to rush off.

I say these things about the calf — it’s dehydrated, needs its mother, should go to the vet — knowing nothing whatsoever about cattle, while L and Pa know plenty. But I trust my intuition, and take the chance of looking a fool know-it-all by saying aloud what comes to mind. I also ask questions that must sound very simple to them; my lack of cattle smarts is obvious.

We chuckled about it when we came into the house.
“I have a lot to learn about farming, that’s for sure,” I admitted. “What did I call that thing again, those old wheels?”

“Old wheels!” he snorted goodnaturedly, grinning.

“That’s it. What is that thing called again?”

“It’s a haybine!”

“Oh yeah.”

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It was my sister Jill’s 42nd birthday yesterday. When I phoned, her husband told me she’d gone out and he didn’t know when she’d be back. I went to town to deposit some cheques into my account, drop books at the library and pick up some new ones, and shop for a gift and card. Ended up with a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of wine, with a sentimental (true sentiments, mind you) card saying I wish we had more time to spend together, sis. I drove to their farm and parked these things on the table, then drove the few more miles into our home town to see if Grandma was home. She wasn’t, but her door was unlocked so I knew she wasn’t far away. I didn’t wait, though; I left a note on the kitchen table saying I’d been there, and came home cross-country.

Last night, Jill phoned. I recognized her number on the call display, and sang Happy Birthday before saying hello.

“Thank you,” she said. “You were here!”
She’d walked in the door, seen the flowers and wine, and melted at the thought that her husband had bought them for her. Then she’d noticed the card wasn’t his handwriting.

“I saw him when I was there,” I said. “Told him if he hadn’t gotten you a gift, he should say the flowers were from him. He’d get a lot of mileage out of that.”

“He would’ve,” she said.

“So what are you guys going to do, anything?”

“Oh, I dunno. I just got home, don’t feel like going anywhere. Gettin old, you know.”

“Hm. Well at least your husband will come in and take you in his arms, kiss you and —”

“Ha!” she snorted. “It’s not *his* birthday, it’s mine!”

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This photo was taken from the bank of the North Saskatchewan River, overlooking North Battleford, after we dropped them off last week. L’s great-grandfather is buried in an old cemetery somewhere around there and we’d gone looking for it.

“The miraculous and the mundane are one and the same, and ... both are right before our eyes.”
-- Vince Rause, Quest for the Divine