The First Calf
My first calf of the year was born yesterday.
I was ready, or at least I hoped I was. First things first, I brought the herd home to the calving pastures. While driving the fence, and closing the gates I saw the season's first bluebirds. Every year, during the first week of March, one or two pairs of Mountain Bluebirds will migrate through on the way to their summer home. The male is indigo blue like a prairie sky at sunset. The female is the color of dead grass, dry soil, and dry winter weeds. On the ground, she could be invisible if she didn't move. They are quick, furtive, and covert; rarely sitting still. They are earth and sky tethered together by some invisible horizon line. They flit and dart ahead of me as I drive along, braiding themselves through the barbed wire fence, quick as a glimpse.
I had already checked both old shop fridges where I keep the vet supplies, and taken inventory. They were well stocked with anti-toxin, antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, colostrum, electrolytes, sulpha boluses, shoulder length gloves, and vitamin D. I have plenty of syringes, and size 14 to 18 gauge needles. These old refrigerators are full of things that I hope to never use, but I know better.
I had changed the light bulb in the calving barn, and filled the pockets of my coveralls with exam gloves, a headlamp, and my little red calving book that has a short pencil held to it with a rubber band. In my pickup, I placed the toolbox that holds the tagging supplies.
A second calf heifer bore her calf, the first of this year, in the very center of the south calving pasture, on the other side of the crick. It was a shadowless, overcast day. The sky a milky white with light snow settling softly in the grass. The calf, brown-black, wet and sticky with vernix, slept, shielded, downwind from its mother. Together they made a semicolon in the center of a blank white page.
I stirred him awake, and tagged his ear, while mother kept close mooing quietly, blissed out with the hormonal rush of birth. He tottered and stumbled. A thin pink length of umbilical cord hung from his navel, fluttering. A part of the inside, now outside; a waving flag of the new and the vulnerable.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011 at 11:24PM
Reader Comments (2)
A lovely prose poem, Ned, and it helped me realize something I probably should have thought of long ago, or maybe I knew but forgot. A couple days ago, my eight year old Sam and I were whispering about the blue jays tucked in the juniper outside our window, and he noticed one was bluer than the other. Of course the old question of why males are prettier than females flashed through us. And, now, upon reading your post and being stunned by the imagery of earth and sky married in the birds, an idea came. Though I have always heard male coloring helps them compete for mates, I hadn't considered that the females need to be invisible as they nest. The colors are not only about procreation, but protection of the precious young. Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe this was already obvious to everyone but me, but when I told Sam my theory, his eyes lit up.
Congratulations, Ned, on your first calf. I do hope it is a good/healthy calving season for
you and the ladies.
I remember walking out there this time of year...as I approached a couple blue birds, they'd fly to the next section of
fence, when I reached that point, they'd fly on to the next, and so on and so on. How I enjoyed the beautiful
streaks of bright blue!
Penny