-
Calf: 1, Mitch: 0
Some time last year I was out with my Dad trying to find a newborn calf so that we could verify its sex and put a tag in its ear for identification purposes.
When a cow has a calf, they will hide it to keep predators from finding it. This sometimes makes it rather difficult to find the little critters.
Normally, the Momma cow doesn't range too far from the little one so when we found her, we knew the calf would be fairly close. But we looked, and looked, and looked, and still no calf.
It was about then that I was to test my theory that I'm smarter than a Momma cow. I know, rather risky, but this was not a life or death matter, so I thought I'd just throw caution to the wind and go for it.
Anyway, I told my Dad to get back into the truck and drive away while I walked into the nearby trees and hid.
As expected ( me being smarter than the cow ), Momma walked over to the calf to check on him. Did I mention he was lying in the middle of the pasture mostly in plain sight except for the slightly higher grass? No, I don't think I did. Stupid humans.
Anyway, once I spotted Momma with the calf, I ran over and grabbed "ahold" of it.
Now if you've never been around cows, what you probably don't understand is there is a pretty good reason that the La Riata was invented. [ Uh, that's Lariat, or rope, for you American types. ]
It's because when a calf gets to be about 4 or 5 days old, they can run like rabbits and you just can't catch them on foot. Which is what we have to do since my Dad doesn't have horses.
Anyway, the calf was only a couple of days old, and since I had the act of surprise on my side, I was able to catch him before he took off.
So I'm squatted down, holding onto the calf, trying to keep it calm, and waiting for my Dad to return so we can tag this feller ( it was a boy-cow ) and get on our way.
The main thing you have to watch out for when you have ahold of a newborn calf is thier fear-reaction – which mainly involves pooping on you. And yes, I said poop. It's yellow and is rather liquid and your Mom will probably make you take your clothes off on the car port before she'll allow you to walk into the house to take a shower. ( it's ok, even though the highway is 100 feet away, most people don't pay attention to half-nekked white boys on the car-port. )
Besides being rather poopy, newborn calves are also very slick from the oils on their hair. This makes them about as easy to hold onto as a greased watermellon.
By the time my Dad made it back, me and the calf had both ended up lying on the ground in a wrasslin' match that was actually quite comical. I was trying to hold onto the calf and not get pooped on, while my Dad was trying to find the ear-tagging device.
After wollering around on the ground for what seemed like 10 minutes, a curious thing happened: Me and the calf ended up facing each other. No longer was I worried about the poopy factor, I was worried about getting kicked in some of the more delicate regions that are located on the forward-facing side of my body. All the while trying to hold onto this damn calf. And my Dad still couldn't find the damn tagger.
It was about this time that the calf discovered that while the smelly-two-legs was smarter than his Mom, it was not smarter than him.
And the little bastard raired back a front leg and stabbed me quite expertly in the middle of the chest with one of those rather sharp newly-manufactured front hooves.
I thought I was going to die. It hurt like hell. So there I was, lying on the ground, ahold of the calf, trying not too get pooped on, trying not to get kicked in the family jewels and trying not to let go of the calf while at the same time trying to catch my breath and not have a heart attack. ( did I mentioned I cried? didn't think so. )s
All of those things combined were way more that I am qualified to handle at any one point in time.
Luckily, my Dad called out to me that he couldn't find the tagger and to let the calf go. I did.
I stumbled back to the truck and the look on my face made my Dad ask what had happened.
I pulled up my shirt, which had a mere muddy-spot on it, to reveal a quarter-inch deep bloody divot residing in the middle of my sternum. It hurt like hell. Did I mention that already?
And the thing that really pissed me off? The fact that I could have sworn I heard the calf-equivalent of laughter as he ran away with his Mother into the safety of the woods and away from the annoying two-legs.
Calf: 1, Mitch: 0
Two words calf-boy: ham-burger.
Copyright (C) 2006 by Mitch Milam
Tall Tales
(No Ratings Yet)1,536 views
Loading ... -
The show must go on
Greetings Folks,
I had what you might call a bit of a setback in both my personal and professional life a couple of weeks ago. My friend and business partner, Will Hadly, unexpectedly passed away on Father's Day from what the doctors called a heart "anomaly" ( which means they don't know what exactly happened ).
It's taken me quite a while to make up my mind on whether or not I should even post such an announcement on my blog, but I finally reasoned that some of the people in the CRM and/or Small Business community that knew Will may not have heard of his passing. If you are one of those people and would like more information, please contact me off-line.
Needless to say, this event was quite a shock to all of us who knew him and speaking for the majority of those folks, he will be sorely missed. Not a day goes by that I don't think of at least one thing that I need to tell him about some obscure factoid that I just ran across or get his opinion on some wild-ass idea that popped into my head.
Will and I had a rather complicated business relationship. On one level, I was merely one of the consulting bodies he used to fulfill customer engagements. On a higher level, we were developing a combined practice to focus on Microsoft Dynamics CRM – and having a blast doing it. Great plans were in the works and we were making excellent headway into the local ( and even national market ) expounding on the benefits and features of CRM 3.0.
Will had been nominated by our buddy Larry Lentz to become a CRM MVP and should he have hung around till July 1st, he would have been given the honor of accepting that assignment. To top even that event, we had been working, studying, and testing and as of the week of his death, had finally achieved Gold Partner status in the Microsoft Partner program.
We pretty much had the world divided into equal parts of optimism and pessimism. Me being the optimist, he being the pessimist. [ this is the part of the program where my friends fall out of their chairs upon reading this - and wondering about my change of state. :) ] This allowed us to cover most bases associated with any problem we ran into and is what made us such a good team. That sounding board and reality check will be sorely missed.
I was watching the Rock Honors on VH1 a couple of weeks ago and they had Paul Rodgers [from Bad Company] fronting Queen as they did a salute to Freddy Mercury with the song: The Show Must Go On. It was very cool and very moving – which is the reason for me selecting that phrase for the title of this entry.
The show must go on. No matter how difficult, sad, disorienting, or painful it may be.
As mentioned, Will and I had great plans and grand ideals about how to transform current and new customers with CRM 3.0 and I don't exactly intend to just throw that all away. Doing so would simply be a waste of time and energy and do no one, living or dead, any good. So, I will indeed endeavor to proceed down the provided path that we had both worked so hard to construct.
Stay tuned as I finish up the pile of CRM-related articles I have on my list as well as some free and commercial CRM add-ons that will be released in the next few months.
Thanks, Mitch
Misc (No Ratings Yet)803 views Loading ... -
Out of the mouths of babes
I went home to Arkansas 4th of July weekend to spend a little time with the folks. My Dad, a retired farmer, still has a few cows to keep him entertained and occupied during the Winter months between quail hunting activities.
My 5-year old nephew loves to go see the cows, though he is more than a little scared of them. He also loves goats ( which some friends of my parents raise and show ). This means any time he comes to visit my parents, an expedition is formed to see the goats, goat man and goat woman ( the owners – names are too complicated for a 5 year old ), and last but not least, the cows.
While visiting the goat man and goat woman, we picked up one of their guests ( 9-year old boy ) and took him with us to visit the cows. He's from Mississippi and I don't think he spends that much time in the country.
He noticed that there were "not many black roads [asphalt] around here," as we were bouncing down one of the trails in my Dad's pasture that was heavily rutted by my Dad driving through when it was muddy and the mud later hardening to make for a rather rough and bouncy ride.
After making another comment about how rough the road was, my nephew made the following, rather astute observation in reply:
"What do you expect boy? We're in a cow pasture!"
And that just about says it all. :)
Meanderings (No Ratings Yet)793 views Loading ...
Loading ...