Night Time Eyeshine

Night time checks during calving season go like this:  I wake up in the middle of the night, and put on the pile of clothes next to the bed. I walk downstairs to the mudroom and put on two jackets, insulated overalls, muck boots, hat and gloves. I put a flashlight in my pocket and drive the two miles to the corrals. On the drive I listen to late night FM radio. The odd shows they won't play during the day- trippy, harmonic new age, hard bop jazz, the stark glinty reality of BBC news. Once there I shut the pickup off, and walk slowly through the heifers. In the background I hear coyotes howling, and Ozzie, Gary's dog, barking and howling back. With the flashlight I watch a skunk who shuffles around every night looking for old afterbirths. In the cone of light from the flashlight I watch waves of tiny airborne dust paticles ebb back and forth like plankton. I check the heifers. Most are simply chewing their cud. I'm looking for the ones laid out flat, having contractions. I look for others whose tails are twitchy or kinked because they are just getting started. Or maybe they have feet sticking out, and I make sure the feet are coming the right way. If so  I'll come back in an hour to see if they are progressing. But this is what I like to see most of all: a new born, full of vigor, maybe ten minutes old. Still steaming, but already teetering around on its feet for the very first time, slick with vernix and amniotic fluid. The umbilical cord dangling unneeded. And mother, concerned but calm, blissed out with hormones, softly mooing while cleaning the new calf. If the temperature is warm enough, like it was this night, there is nothing to worry about, so I go home, and fall back asleep. 

Comments

[John Cross]

Damn it I missed it again!