The Little Girl Under the Table

Yesterday, Tim and the boys put some more cows in the corral. One was a momma who had given birth Saturday night (sadly, the calf was born dead) and another was a teenage boy who needed to be castrated. Tim wanted the momma in the corral so that he didn't have to go and hunt her down to give her the shots from the vet that would help her expel the afterbirth. Castration and afterbirth - sound nasty enough yet??

Going on with the story....apparently the teenager in the corral is still hanging around his momma and she had, well, (forgive me for this!)she had a cow that he was not with her. So she mooed her blasted head off all night. In the house a moo sounds a lot like a cell phone on vibrate to a sleepy person, so I kept wanting to answer my phone! Then at 4:40, my phone really did vibrate to tell me that it needed to be hooked up to the charger. I got up and stole Tim's charger and plugged my phone in. Then I laid there until 6 AM when I had to get up. Not fun. I got up, woke Kirsten up and went back to my room to get dressed to take her to the bus stop. When I came back out to the kitchen, Kirsten was UNDER the table. Has anyone ever watched those spooky movies where the ghostly thing is sitting quietly under the table waiting for you to walk by?? She scared the bejeebers out of me! She said she was under there because she was cold. Well, get yourself a sweatshirt, missy, and don't do that to your mother!

Then I got the boys and girls off to school, Tim and Tyler left for Tyler's tonsillectomy and I went to Walmart - not my favorite place in the world, but I had to get some things for the Relief Society meeting I'm teaching tonight (lunchbox ideas and inexpensive gifts! - way fun!!). While at Walmart, Tim called and said he and Tyler were home and he needed me to be his 'tail person' (he actually said 'tail man', but I'm not a man) while he castrated the cow. My day just got so much better. Walmart and a de-manhood job. woo-hoo!

Got home, unloaded the groceries and asked a completely unconscious Tyler how he felt. Then I couldn't put it off anymore. I went up to the corral. The new corral is very functional and makes working the cows so much less terrifying. (cattle are very big you know!) It didn't take long to put the bull in the head gate. Then I held the tail for dear life. The poor thing buckled when Tim started the 'surgery' and I got dizzy - but I know not to let go of the tail (a cow's kick is a very dangerous thing). They enter the head gate as bulls and leave as steers. That's just the way it goes. Let me state for the record that every farmer should have a tail MAN for this job and NOT his wife. The job was done, the dog had his lunch, and I opted out of eating lunch.

The momma cow was a little easier. She pinned herself in a very awkward position in between to gates, so Tim gave her the shots right there instead of putting her in the head gate. We let the ball-less wonder out of the corral and I left.

Onto something else...a lot of people I know were affected by Hurricane Irene. What a mess it is in some places! Even though we live in North Carolina, we didn't get a single drop of rain from Irene. This is the 'pond' the cows drink from. We seriously need a long, heavy rain on this end of the state.