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Family Letters by Claudia Cuevas Pass Christian MS March 23, 1996 Dear Family, Well, are you ready for the continuing tale of the Cuevas Clan and their barnyard beasties? As of my last letter, BoBo’s mama had finally accepted (or rather stolen back) her calf and was proud to be its mama. She is now so proud she hides it and won’t let it near any of the other calves. Every chance it gets, it slips away (“That’s what she gets for not bonding better with it from birth”, declares Mother) and tries to join the others. So, BoBo’s mama is constantly following after her calf and trying to lure it away with soft, gentle mooing. The calf isn’t about to be lured away from those other mama’s with automatic milk machines hanging from them, and he tries them all out every chance he gets. Most of the cows won’t let him suck, but our faithful little red cow (his one night “foster” mama) will let him suck and anyone else who has the notion. Marvin said he went out yesterday and there were three calves all sucking on her at once. I also told you that we had three more calves to be born this spring—two to first time mamas and one to a second time mama. Last weekend (thank goodness they pick the weekends) another first time mama had her calf. A lovely bull calf and had it with no problems. She loved on it, cleaned it up, let it suckle and was a perfect mama. We’re out of the woods, right? WRONG! This cow does not pass all of the afterbirth! Fortunately, Marvin notices it and we try to pen her in the barn lot catch pen. Her calf is having none of this and we had a devil of a time penning them both up at the same time. Marvin watches her for a couple of days and then calls the vet (he is Marvin’s best friend). So out comes the vet and at about 9pm on this past Thursday, the vet has to clean her out (no lights at the catch pen so they had to use truck lights) and put some medicine up inside of the cow. Marvin said the mama cow smelled so bad it was a wonder the calf would suck. Today, Saturday, Marvin has to go in to work for a short time so he checks the remaining two expectant mamas before he leaves at 7am. Wouldn’t you know it, the other first time mama has just had her calf and she must have been first in the nurturing class BoBo’s mama taught because, not only did she just “drop” the calf, she left the field and went into another pasture all together! Marvin said when he got there the calf must have just been born because it was still steaming and the cow hadn’t even licked it at all—she was down in the corner of the next field. He told me, as he left for work, to get one of the kids to check on her in about an hour to see if she has taken the calf and is cleaning it up. I gave her about two hours just for good measure. I was just starting to color my hair (had the dye on the roots) when I decided to look out the bedroom window (I do need to buy binoculars as I had given Mother’s back to her and so I couldn’t see that far away too clearly) and I thought I could see a little black lump right on the crest of the hill and not moving. So I told Buddy to take a couple of old towels out and see if the cow had licked her calf—if not, dry the calf off for her. BIG mistake! Buddy must have been in his “Good Samaritan” mode today. (He’s almost nineteen and quite frequently grumpy as most male nineteen year olds are. He tries very hard not to show it, but you can tell he thinks it is a major miracle Marvin and I can even function—let alone know anything at all because of our advanced senility!) Anyway, back to “Buddy, the Good Samaritan”. I had intended that he just check on the calf—make sure it was dry and breathing, that sort of thing. I was going to wait until Marvin got home to decide the next step, if the mama cow was still acting strangely. Here I am in the house with nothing on but my robe and hair dye on my roots when I see Buddy rounding the corner of the barn carrying the calf. I didn’t want to tell him to take it back (one does not tell a nineteen year old to “take back” a kindness that they have thought to do all by themselves—otherwise, no more “kindnesses” as they get their sensitivities hurt so easily). So, rather than say, “What on earth are you doing with that calf—leave it alone”, which is what I really wanted to say; I say instead, “Is it all right?” which further convinces Buddy that I am not long for the Old Folks Home. He proceeds to tell me to wake Pam (that’s about as fun as telling a nineteen year old to “take it back”) so that she can help him herd the mama cow into the barn lot. So, here we go again—another cow that refuses to take her calf. Pam gets up and the three of us (I am praying my hair doesn’t bleach out white in the sun before I can get back inside and finish coloring it brown) herd the mama cow up to the barn lot. The kids are trying to be kind to me by telling me they will take care of everything, but what they are really thinking is that I’ll just get in the way. So I take the hint and go back inside and finish my hair. They do manage to get a halter on the mama, tie her head and force her to let the calf suck. They accomplish all of this without the help of any adult. At least this mama doesn’t try to kick the calf when it nurses so they only tie her head and do not have to tie off a hind leg. Satisfied that they can do no more at present, they come back inside to enjoy a leisurely morning of cartoons on TV. Now Marvin arrives on the scene. The kids and I had decided (they let me outside for a while again after I fixed my hair) that we would keep the calf up and let the mama cow out to roam in the barn lot. We would just join the two when the calf needed to nurse. This arrangement seems to be working well—the calf is resting in the stall and mama is wandering around but not attacking it. Enter Marvin. I take Marvin outside to show him the kids’ accomplishments so far and he decides the cow and calf should be together. This makes the cow so mad she begins to circle the barn stall and when the calf accidentally gets in her way, she butts it about four feet across the stall. Well, this angers Marvin and he catches the cow again (we had left the halter on her) and forces her to let the calf suck. Before Marvin appeared on the scene, the calf was sleeping quite peacefully. The next thing the calf knew it stood up, was butted across the stall abruptly and now this strange man is insisting it nurse again when it had just finished its fill only a half hour earlier. Glad to oblige, the calf does nurse and is getting milk. The mother does not kick at it, but she sure is not happy about the situation either. At this point curiosity has gotten the best of Buddy and he is coming back outside to see if Marvin and I have messed up the whole situation. Marvin’s brain is now working in overdrive and he sees these circumstances as an ideal opportunity to improve the barn and rebuild a partition that one of the earlier reluctant cows took out when she decided she no longer needed the gate to leave the barn by. So he yells to Buddy to bring a crescent wrench, hammer, etc. and send out Pam. I quickly decide there is work for me inside the house and leave the three to their barn remodeling project. Marvin always operates under the premises “if enough is adequate, more is better”. You know the saying, “If it works, don’t fix it!” Whoever made that up knew Marvin. The idea is to fix the partition (wall) that another cow demolished and add a gate, thus separating mama cow and calf into two separate large stalls. Hopefully mama will look lovingly at her newborn calf and welcome it with open udders when Marvin does allow it to suck. In the meantime, the calf will be protected from cow abuse by the partition and gate. Mama can stare lovingly at her calf through the partition, baby can bleat and call to mama, and maybe mama cow’s latent mother instinct will finally kick in. That is how we left it last night (Saturday night) when we went to bed. Marvin seems to think that he can communicate mentally with the animals and that all of our animals have this wonderful ability to read his mind. In fact, in the twenty years of our marriage I have yet to convince him I flunked mind reading in college. The kids don’t even try to convince him. This morning, Sunday, Marvin goes out to check on the cow and calf. Again, no one informed the calf of the game plan and sometime during the night it turned mountain goat and scaled the gate or fence to get to its mama. A quick check proved the calf to be alive, but mama still wasn’t interested in it. She was interested in feed so she allowed her calf to suckle while she ate some grain Marvin fed her. For good measure just to let everybody know she had not accepted motherhood as yet, she’d reach around and butt the calf across the stall every so often. So we are still trying to keep cow and calf separate—hopefully we will figure out how the calf got in with her mama before anything serious happens. Now it looks as if the last cow (thank goodness) to calve this spring is going to have her baby today. We had no problems with her last year so one can hope this year will be a repeat. Then we won’t be worrying about any more calves until sometime this fall. I am sure I will find something else to keep you posted on so I’ll try to keep the letters coming. Someone told Mother that you get a kick out of them, so I send a letter to all of Mother’s kin. Oh, that reminds me. If Buddy and Pam think Marvin and I are hopeless, you can imagine how they view Mother. Don’t get me wrong—they love her and are not unkind; it is just that their viewpoint of older people is so limited. Anyway, I forgot to tell you about this yesterday. I’ll have to give you a little background first. People in the South seem to consider asking questions almost bordering on rude. Most of the Southerners attitude is: If someone wants me to know, they will tell me. The exception to this rule is Marvin who expects everybody and everything to be a mind reader therefore he does not have to bother explaining anything. Now Midwesterners (Mother and I) on the other hand figure if we aren’t told what we want to know, we will ask. That way we have it clear in our minds—even though it necessitates Southerners having to explain themselves. Buddy and Pam are true died-in-the-wool Southerners. They hate being asked questions. So, all the time Marvin and the kids make these sly comments about Mother and I asking so many questions. They make these comments to me, but they tolerate Mother’s questions without comments—I hope. Now back to yesterday. When the kids finally got me to go inside and finish coloring my hair (thus getting rid of one dottering old adult) who should come outside to see what is going on but Mother. I happened to look outside while drying my hair and saw Mother and the kids outside the stall looking at the calf and I knew Buddy and Pam would have something to say to me about all the questions Mother asked them all the while they were wrestling with a 1000 pound angry mother cow trying to get a halter on her (she had never had a halter on her in her life) and also trying not to get stomped in the process. While this was going on, according to the kids when relating it to me later, Mother was steady asking foolish questions. In reality, I thought some of the questions were lacking in thought, too. But what really topped if off was when Pam turned to me and in all seriousness asked me, “Are you sure Grandma grew up on a farm?” I nearly died laughing. So long for now. As things develop I’ll send them on to you.
Claudia and Family
P.S. Pam has named this new little heifer calf Bo-Bette |