So, about that little calf....
The next morning, we are having school over at the cabin because when we arrive at the ranch that morning the carbon monoxide detector was going off again. I'm not really sure what the situation is there, but instead of sticking around to find out I open the windows, left the door open and we went back to the cabin for school.
During recess, after lunch, I can hear Hunter yell that Squeak has got blood coming from her butt. So we all run out and down to the shed where are the cats live and sure enough, she has had five kittens! Surprisingly enough, she has all of the kittens in the basket, where not that long ago, last August, she was a kitten herself! Id even looked as though she had had the kittens in the basket verses having have had them somewhere else and move them there.
So the blanket is pretty wet, so we decide to do a little clean up and grab a drive blanket to put down instead. And that is when we see that one of the kittens is not moving and is definitely dead. We decide to bury it. I make a little God's Eye cross out of 2 sticks and some yarn. Hunter and Ben dig the hole and we put a little kitten inside and say a little prayer and bury her.
But in no time at all, we are running back up to the shed to check out all the other kittens! It was pretty exciting and everyone was bouncing with excitement.
Scott drives by and is headed over to the ranch to check on the calf from the day before. He just wants to make sure that the calf is nursing and things are going well. He has looked at it early that morning and it was curled up in the corner of the corral. When we had gone there in the late morning it looked as though it was exactly in the same place and have not moved. So he was going back to check on it.
In a little while, I get a call from Scott that says he is going to need my help over at the ranch. We are going to do what we did the day before and see if we can get the calf to nurse, it is not looking good. The calf is looking pretty weak. So, I load up the kids and we head over.
The heifer is still in the small corral but not in the lock down position anymore, and we need to get her back into the head squeeze so we can help the calf nurse. The calf is laying there with labored breathing and is really looking weak.
Now, I am in my early days of being a ranch woman and there are many, many things that I do not know and more importantly, that I do not even think of. So I have got to stick and I am standing with my feet up on the gate, leaning over using the stick to get the heifer to go into this specific corner of the corral. Of course, I am kind of talking nicely to it and telling her to go get her baby, move over to the corner, be a good girl and getting the right place. And this heifer is just freaking out and getting irate!
I have no idea and I'm totally caught off guard when she kicks in my direction and hits the gate right below my foot. I could feel the vibration from the gate through my foot. I stepped back and I'm so shaken by the whole thing that what do I do? I start to cry. All I could think of what if she would have been 3 inches higher she would have kicked me in the shin! And all I could think about was my leg being broken in half and having a limp for the rest of my life and walking around the ranch with a cane because of some stupid thing I did without even thinking.
But I suppose there is really not time for me to cry and feel sorry for myself, so I ask Katie to go and get the whip we use for the horse. And this way I can stand back and still get her moving.
Through all of this, the calf is just laying there and is not doing well at all. Scott looks down at the calf and looks up at me and says he thinks this calf is on its way out. All the excitement sort of quickly drains away because there is no real urgency anymore. The calf is just laying there taking its last few breaths. Scott looks down at it and picks it up and moves it closer to the heifer and says to the calf how he is sure she wants to be with her mom right now. The calf is still on the outside of the corral so I go to her and start to pet her. Every once in awhile she flinches and I'm not sure if it is because she is in pain or it is just the process of dying.
I cannot help but think about how at the end we all sort of die in the same way. There are those last few breaths we take as we are on our way and there is just no turning back. And that last out-breath that we take, when our last little bit of what makes us alive and fills our Being is exhaled, how we just become a part of everything.
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