Monday night around 10:00 I woke Loverboy from his snooze on the couch, curled up and virtually naked like a baby, and asked him to come with me to the barn to feed the calf. Pa had said he’d do it but I figured he might have fallen asleep, and I was right.

What a beautiful sky hung above us on that short walk, the stars so bright and bountiful they were dazzling. I really should get outside at night more often. L says there have been some impressive northern lights in the early morning hours when he’s gone out to check cattle.

The calf has shown no improvement, just lays there unmoving and apparently uninterested in anything, although this afternoon when I fed him he drank hungrily and that is surely a good sign. Alone with him for the first time, I sat down and pulled his curly brown head onto my lap and saw the tears L’s been mentioning, clear droplets on the smooth flatness under each eye.

Pa said the same thing L did a couple days ago; that it may be time to knock the calf on the head, but he doesn’t want to do it. I don’t know how much more time the little fella will be given to come around. “All that milk gets to be expensive, too,” Pa said, “and when it doesn’t look hopeful....”

I petted and patted, chatted and loved the calf up as best I could, sat and cuddled him for a while after the bottle was empty. But it would be no surprise to me if one of these times I walk into that stall and he is cold and dead. I’ve started to expect it.

6:30 p.m.

I’m beat. Not that I’ve worked hard today, but that I’ve been on the go, walking back and forth across the yard at my usual good clip, to feed the calf every three hours and to help Pa cut cow/calf pairs from the herd and load them into the stock trailer, then haul them out to the pasture they call “22” and wield a big stick (this is for my benefit more than theirs, because it’s a tossup who’s more scared of who) to keep the ones already there from coming out when the gate is opened for the new ones to go in.

We made three trips out there, and they were the best part of the day. There are few pastimes better than driving through the countryside, across ripple-hilled stubblefields under flocks of geese patterning blue sky above, or listening to the thunderous croaking of frogs in the sloughs when we stop and get out of the truck.

But I’m tuckered! It’s 6:30 and I’ve just gotten in the house to make supper for the boys. Beckster and Zander both came in with me, so it is not restful in here. And Pa said he’d call on me when he gets back from supper (Ma wanted to go out for a meal), to help him put the pregnant heifers back in the barn for the night in case they should calf and need his help.

I'm glad I was able to be of some service today, but I do not wish to spend one more moment standing in a quicksand of cowshit, breathing in the stench of it, or being bellered at by a brown mass of horny-browed one-ton beasts freaked out over the temporary separation from their babies.

Cow girl, I am not.
Tired and cranky, a little sunburned, and not wanting to go out there again tonight, I am.

Fortunately there’s leftover spaghetti to reheat so I can get my own critters fed without much effort, and I can take it easy until it’s time to feed that calf again, or Pa calls on me, whichever comes first.