Spring calves: from the Valley Archives...

                   

I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I shan't be gone long.--You come too.

                                   The Pasture
                                    Robert Frost

A serious case of cabin fever due to an unusual snow event here in the Valley this month has kept the editor housebound for weeks. Except for a patchwork of white, plowed and shoveled piles and shaded areas, the snow is melting into memory. But it's a slow melting, a lingering longer than I can remember. An abnormal residual: a couple days of delight and then the rains usually wash the novelty away. I'm tired of snow, tired of shoveling snow, tired of scraping snow, tired of driving in snow, tired of tromping in the snow to and fro from house to chicken coop and back, tired of looking at a cold, white landscape of snow. Christmas, when we needed the white stuff, has long passed and with the vernal equinox just a scant three weeks away, a winter wonderland is the farthest thing from my mind.

Now that the roads are clear and dry, it's nice to get out in the Valley again, shake the kinks out of shanks' mare, and, as I've heard phrased somewhere, blow the stink off oneself... walk a furlong or two.

Today I turned at Sargent Road and strolled by Werkhovens' dairy barn where a regiment of black and whites, up to their noses in fresh hay, were stoking their cuds, a veritable milky way of contentment. At that moment an ATV towing a trailer rolled up, loaded to the sideboards with calf bottles.  "Lunch time?" I asked the bundled up young woman at the helm. "It's been a long time since breakfast,"she laughed. As she and another young lady prepared to stuff the bottles in the plastic sconces attached to the pens, I left them to their work and shuffled off. It was about my lunchtime, too.

I paused to watch the calves. From all appearances they seemed an aggregate of ears, noses and spindly legs, putting me in mind of the word "hobbledehoy" which Webster's gives as "an awkward, gawky youth." It's a miracle, I thought, that they ever grow into their bodies. As I thought about their innocence and vulnerability a dark memory surfaced. Years ago a troubled young man with a twisted spirit walked among the calf pens at night and bludgeoned several occupants to death with a baseball bat. Authorities apprehended the young man, and some small justice was served I believe, but as I watched the young woman and her assistant's careful tending of the calves, I thought of the heartache and pain the Werkhovens must have experienced at the sight of the dead innocents they were unable to shelter and protect.

As I trudged toward lunch, my thoughts turned to Pasado's Safe Haven, our local animal rescue organization established after a pet donkey named Pasado was bludgeoned to death in the manner of Werkhovens' calves. Some years back when I discovered a feral cat and her kittens were residing in our woodshed, I called Pasado's Safe haven, but because no one was using the kittens for batting practice, they said my cat problem was beyond their jurisdiction.