“We’ll fix a couple of drinking cups this morning.” It wasn’t a question, rather, a statement from husband.
My heart sank. I hate fixing. It’s more of me standing around watching him fix or handing him tools or running for nuts or bolts or washers than any actual hands-on fixing. Occasionally, I have to hold a bracket or a shield out of the way, depending on what we’re working on, but for the most part I just stand there and wait it out or wait for an order. This particular morning, he knew I wasn’t scheduled to work at the post office, so I couldn’t get out of it.
We had let cows out, and while he cleaned the barn, I threw down sawdust for bedding and hay bales for the calves. As he hauled manure, I stacked the bales, bedded the cows’ stalls and put dry straw in the clean gutter. Looking back on my work while waiting for him, I felt appreciative of our pile of white sawdust. It makes the whole barn look cleaner.
When husband got back, we began working on the drinking cups. Two cows were in the barn, next to the cups we were fixing. They didn’t get to go out for recess that morning for one reason or another. I was looking at my husband at one point, focusing on what he needed when I felt a cow’s hot breath on me. I turned and was eye-ball to one of her large, fully-extended nostrils and got a hefty blast of cow breath smack dab in my face. I felt the puff of warmth from her and noticed piercing through a sunbeam, the white swirl her breath made in the cooler barn air.
I wouldn’t call it pleasant and I started thinking about my sister, my brother’s wife. When she was pregnant with each one of her five kids, she could not tolerate cow breath. It made her sick to her stomach. All these many years later (her youngest is 19), I still felt a twinge of sympathy for her; it’s not the best smell even when a person’s stomach isn’t queasy.
Later on, after fixing the drinking cups, we started letting cows in. My job is to go outside to the cow yard and allow the older, more mature cows in first, for they know just where they’re going. After they’re safely in, I let the younger ones through, trying for only one at a time, otherwise we have a rodeo going on inside. My husband stands in the middle of the barn aisle, directing traffic.
When they are all in and accounted for, there’s always one or two older cows that are just plain psychotic. Around and around the feed wagon they go. Usually I need my husband out there to help me round up these last ones. They’re always half crazy. I have no idea why and can’t begin to guess; I just put up with them.
Tying everybody up is another challenge, as each cow has their own oddities. Because I do it daily, I know which ones rear their heads up and which ones are more meek and lower their heads for me accommodatingly. Some square their head like they’re going to bunt at me, some are already chewing their cud, some have even laid down. I have to wait for my husband to stand behind a couple of them so they don’t back out.
On this day, one of the younger, tamer cows laid the bottom of her head right across the back of my neck as I bent down to grab her chain. Once in a while, I get a sandpaper-tongue lick across my jacket and, of course, a couple of warm cow-breath puffs in the face along the way.
Cows will be cows. We just have to put up with them the best we can. If we’re good to them, they’ll be good to us.
(“God spoke: ‘Let Us make human beings in Our image, make them reflecting Our nature so they can be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle, and yes, Earth itself, and every animal that moves on the face of Earth.’” Genesis 1:26-27, The Message Bible)
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