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