Newborn Calves are Much More Exciting Than The Brangelina Baby.

I slept through my alarm that morning and woke up when Jerry came in the camper at 10 AM. “You gonna sleep all day?” he asked me as I rubbed my eyes.
“No,” I laughed. “I’ll be in in a minute.”
“I’ll have coffee ready,” he said.

I slept in my clothes so all I had to do was fold the blankets back up before heading into the house. While I was doing so, I called Carl. “I knew you would oversleep!“ he said when he answered.
“I know, I know, but I still want to come down.”
“Oooh, you’re surely welcome to come whenever ya want.”

Jerry was in the kitchen, already showered and dressed, pouring coffee.
“I missed the milking,” I told him. “But I’m going to go down there anyway in a little bit.”
He showed me all the remodeling he’d done to the house, which was quite a lot from the way he described it.
“Can you still find houses around here for under $100,000?” I asked.
“Ooh, yeah, but it’s getting’ hard. You can barely find anything nowadays for 80 or 90 thousand. We lucked out and bought this place for $54,000.”
I nearly spit out my coffee. “Seriously?! This place is nice!”
“Yeah, but I had to gut the whole thing and redo it. It was bad, real bad.”
“Well, it looks great now.”
“Yeah, it’s comin’ along.”

Jerry was generous enough to let me use their shower. When I came out, he said, “Oooh, I gotta show ya one more thing before ya go!” He led me into the half-finished guest room that had three clothing bags hanging in the open closet. “These are my Elvis suits!”

He opened the first bag and sure enough, there was a white satin jumpsuit with rhinestone appliqués and a red satin cape. A huge gold belt and red satin scarf hung over the collar. ‘This was the first one I made,” he said. “I used a pattern from an old jump suit that had pockets. I left the pockets off. And feel right here -- I put a coat hanger in the collar so it stands straight up like his did. Other impersonators, theirs always fall over.” He opened another bag to reveal a white and gold suit with a huge sundial on it. “I saw him in ‘77, two months before he died. He was wearing this suit, with the sundial. So I made my own. This whole part is hand-sewn.” It was incredibly intricate and beautiful, and I was amazed at his handiwork.
“Come here, I gotta show you the others.”

He led me to the basement stairs, where the other suits were hanging on wall hooks. “This one I made a few years ago,” he said, pointing to a black, glittery ensemble with a baby blue collar.
“And this one, this one is the best, but I has to retire it. You remember that movie ‘3,000 Miles to Graceland’, where Kurt Russell robs a casino in an Elvis suit? Well, I watched that movie over and over, in slow motion, so I could get where every little rhinestone was. Then I copied it. I had to go to every bead and craft store in the state,almost, to find the right crystals. See these blue ones? There’s 700 of these glued on, and a thousand of these little gold ones.”
“How long did it take you to make it?”
“Ooh, ‘bout 3 weeks.”
“That’s it?”
“Ooh, yeah. Didn’t take too long at all.”
“Why did you have to retire it?”
“Oooh, ‘cause you see these beads here? I had to glue them on with silicone and the ones in my elbow creases kept popping off when I moved. So I don’t wear it too much anymore.”

“I got a DJ gig later today,” he said.
“What kinds of stuff do you play?”
“Country, oldies, and some pop. Some metal.”
“Do you ever play rap?”
“No, but I got a request tonight, someone wanting to hear the Sweet Peas group, or something with peas.”
“The Black-Eyed Peas?”
“Yeah, that’s it!” he laughed. “The Black-Eyed Peas.”

He gave me a CD, the same one that had been in the jukebox the night before, and we hugged goodbye. Looking back now, I should have had him sign it. “If you’re ever in town again, just stop by!” he called after my car.
“Will do, thank you so much!”

I found my way back to Rt. 13 and headed to Shuler’s Farm. I used my one bar of cell phone service to call Carl, who said he would be out in the field. Two hound dogs barked and growled at me as I poked around the front of the farm. A small white house sat to the left, and a big, open equipment shed to the right. Directly at the end of the driveway was a large cow barn flanked by four silos. I stuck my head in the cow barn and saw about sixty heifers facing opposite ends of the barn, their hinds facing inward, thirty on one side and thirty on the other. A one-foot wide gutter ran the entire length of the concrete floor, on each side of the walkway, catching urine and manure. The smell was ghastly but expected. I left the barn and started walking towards the hayfield, just in time to see Carl riding towards me on a yellow ATV.

“Hey!” I called as he rolled up into the driveway.
He looked hung over and gave me a meager, “Hi. I’m hurtin’. Well, you ready to see the farm?”
“Sure am!” I exclaimed, and I followed him into the side room. Tanks, tubes, hoses and bottles hung from steel poles in the small room. Two sinks stood kitty-corner to each other and a giant steel tank sat beside a water heater.

“Come on this way,” Carl said, leading me through that room to the same area where the cows were. I was nervous about getting kicked, and tried to walk directly in the middle of the walkway. As we got closer to the end of the barn, Carl let out an “Oh, SHIT!”

I looked, and there to our left, beside the last cow in that row, was a newborn calf flailing in the gutter, covered in manure and urine. Its hind legs were still inside its mother. Carl ran and grabbed its front hooves and pulled. The back hooves slid out, along with the bloody umbilical cord. I helped him pull the calf from the gutter, nearly losing my grip in the afterbirth, blood and urine that coated the poor animal. A trail of slime and blood showed where the calf had slid across the concrete. The mother cow was sitting down, blood running down her tail and half of the umbilical cord hanging out of her distended genetalia. We needed her to get up and get milked, to make a bottle for the calf, who was shaking and kicking pitifully on the concrete, trying to stand but slipping in the blood. Carl picked up the calf, a male, and moved it from the walkway to a side corner of the barn, near its mother’s head, then moved a large black heifer to an empty stall. While he moved the mother to a stall better suited for milking, I ran and got my camera. As I came back in, Carl was giving the newborn some shots, and he taught me how to shove a tube syringe down its throat and pump medicine into its mouth. We both ran back to the hose room, grabbing a cannister with a huge nipple on top, a milk can and a hose with four suction cups on one end. “We got 25 minutes to get milk into that calf before it gets sick. I don’t know how long that thing’s been out, so we may have less,” he told me.

It felt like a race against time. We ran back to the mother and he began pushing her into position. She was fighting him every step of the way, kicking and pushing him around. It seemed a hard and violent thing to milk a cow, not at all the gentle process it seems to be in children’s books. Carl had to hold her steady with his shoulder and head as he felt around her udders, sanitizing them with iodine and then squeezing them til they streamed. He hooked her udders up to the suction hoses and she nearly reared backwards. “Do they always fight like this?” I shouted over the din of lowing and pissing heifers.
“All the time. Welcome to dairy farming!”
I prayed for her to be steady so we could feed the calf.

Finally, enough milk had flown from the hoses to fill the can halfway, and Carl carried it over to me. I held the bottle at a tilt as he poured the milk from the massive can into the small opening of the bottle. The milk spilled over and slid down my arms, and I was surprised at how warm it was. When the bottle was full, I screwed the cap on and jumped over the stall gate to the shivering calf. My clothes and hands were already filthy with manure, milk and afterbirth by this time, so it was barely made worse by gripping the calf’s slimy head and pinching its jaw open. “Open up, my love, come on,” I urged. “That’s a good boy, come on.” Finally, he took the nipple and began sucking hungrily. His bottom teeth were already formed and jutting out of his white gums, and he bit the nipple as he ate. He tried to stand up as I fed him, but I pushed him down on the ground, knowing it would be easier to feed him with his head back. He drank about half the bottle and then spit out the nipple, sated but still covered in feces. “Can we please clean him?” I asked Carl.
“Sure, let’s get the wheelbarrow,” he said.

Carl wheeled the barrow out from the corn silo, rocking it to shake the excess corn meal from the inside. He picked up the calf and heaved him into the pocket. “Not so hard!” I urged.
“Oooh, they don’t feel nothin'."
"Well, look at him. He's shivering, so obviously he feels cold!"
"You're such a girl," he said, wheeling the calf to the hose room.

As we were wheeling the calf to the hose room, his little head peeked up from the bottom of the pocket. Even covered in shit, he was still adorable.
"What do you do with the boy calves?" I asked as we neared the wash room.
"Sell 'em or butcher 'em. Turn 'em into hamburger."
Looking around at the dirty cows, the shit-covered floors, and the tiny ball of cow I had just fed, I thought, "I'm going vegan."

Carl dumped the calf onto the floor of the room and began running warm water through the hose as I pulled the newborn by his hooves to the center of the room. I got a case of the Lemme-Do-Its and grabbed the hose from Carl's hand, testing the water to make sure it was warm. "You'd make a good farm wife," he joked as I sprayed the manure from the baby's head, revealing a perfect, snow-white blaze down the center of his face.
"There's my baby boy!" I sang as Carl left me to the rinsing and went outside to talk to a neighbor who had come by. I sprayed and sprayed until all the manure looked gone, and then ran my hand down his thick, newborn coat to make sure the water ran clean. I lifted his legs to wash his underside and rolled him over to get the parts I missed. I liked the cleaning, and felt the satisfaction of hard work done right, nothing like sitting in the office all day. Hard work is a cleansing in itself, like a purification process, and the rewards are great. I feel that when I work on farms or with children.

Carl came back inside with a man carrying a small child, both wearing Green Bay Packers sweatshirts. The little boy's name was Levi, and he pointed to the wet calf, saying, "be-be".
"Yes," his father said. "That is a baby."
"Greg, this is Jessica. She's from Washington, DC. I met 'er last night at the bar and she wanted to work the farm for a day -- don't know why, but I got 'er here now!"
We all laughed as I continued spraying the calf.

When the cleaning was done, the calf again tried to stand up. Carl had doused his umbilical cord in iodine -- "That'll make it shrink up and fall right off!"-- and I got so excited at helping the calf stand that I forgot, grabbing the animal by its underside and heaving it up, staining my hands with iodine in the process. My fingernails are still orange. We put the calf back in the barrow and wheeled it to a pen where other calves were laying on the soft hay. I walked behind Carl, single file as he said, "This is what I do, seven days a week, three-hundred and sixty-five days a year. And if we didn't, wouldn't nobody have no milk. People think it just comes from stores. They don't realize how hard the farmin' part is." I silently agreed.

After we took it out of the barrow, I gave the calf a long rub down before closing the gate, patting its head and stroking its wet coat for a long time. "Bye, my little baby," I whispered, then made my way back to the hose room. An orange kitten with green eyes came running up to me as I walked, begging to be picked up. I scooped him up and held him close to my dirty shirt, feeling him purr.

"Oh, I see you met Little D," Carl said, walking towards the calf pen to get me. He scratched the kitten behind the ears as it buried its face in my neck.
"Yeah, he won't let go. What's going to happen to that calf now? Are you going to save the rest of that bottle? Will you keep it in the fridge? And warm it up later? Will you keep him as a bull?"
Carl seemed bemused by all my questions. "Prob'ly just sell it. Him and his mom. They'll get pastured and raised for whatever."
"I hope so. I hope he's alright."

After all the excitement, it was time for me to go. Carl and I were still both covered in filth, but I was so overwhelmed by the events of the birth I forgot to ask if I could wash up in the farmhouse.
"Well, that's dairy farmin' for ya!" Carl said as he walked me to my car.
"I don't think I could do it."
"Oooh, ya could. If ya put your mind to it."
"Well, I'll leave it to you. You're much better at it than me."
"You come back, now, if you're ever in town again. You keep in touch, ya?"
"Of course!"

I thanked him profusely, shocked and happy at the intensity of the visit. I drove, in a daze, back into town and bought gas and a terrible roast beef sandwich at a gas station. I washed my hands for an eternity at the sink, but they were still orange and reeked of manure, as did my clothes.
Exhausted by the events of the morning, I found a community park, changed clothes in the primitive bathroom, and feel asleep in the car by a creekbed.

I slept for nearly two hours, until the rapid, happy shouting of a Latino family woke me up. I rolled out of the car, marveling at how my hands still smelled like afterbirth and shit, but not caring. I had helped bring a baby cow into the world. It was an intense, amazing feeling for a city girl like me. I wanted to run up to strangers, dirty and stinking, and say, "I helped birth a calf this morning!" For the old hand dairy farmers, it would be no great shakes, but for me it was incredible.

I headed north on Rt. 13, turning west onto Rt. 8 at Prentice, and meandered my way towards Minnesota, still in a daze and still smelly, but fantastically happy.