Animals Don't Blush

by David R Gross

  “Just inside the back door,” I said, plopping down again.

  John went out, not bothering to put on a coat, despite the wind and near zero temperature. I heard the truck door open and slam closed. John stomped back into the kitchen.

  “Just a tad cool out there,” he said. He filled the stainless steel bucket three-quarters full of steaming water and then looked at me.

  I nodded and got to my feet, gulping down the remaining half-cup of dark syrup. “Let’s do it,” I said. “You drive.”

  I held the bucket between my feet, glad for the warmth when some of the hot water sloshed out over my rubber boots. Since most of the airflow from the heater was directed through the defrosters, there wasn’t much heat near the floor. We lurched and bumped our way out to the three-sided calving shed.

  At the open side of the shed, we stopped; the headlights provided the only light. I saw a Hereford-Angus-cross heifer down on her right side, her head tied to a post sunk deep in the center of the shed with one of John’s throw ropes. The heifer was breathing hard and straining. One leg of the calf was sticking out.

  The floor of the shed was a mixture of frozen mud and manure. The wind whistled through half-inch gaps between the boards on the north side. I looked up to see scuttling clouds and an occasional star where sections of the galvanized metal roof had blown away.

  A sigh escaped. I went back to the truck, took out a syringe and needle, a bottle of procaine, Nolvasan disinfectant concentrate, surgical soap in a plastic squeeze bottle, and a set of OB chains. After dumping a shot of Nolvasan into the still-warm water, I threw the OB chains into the bucket. They clanked metal against metal.

  “Well, John,” I said, “do you think we can get her up? I need to give her an epidural, and it will be a lot easier if she’s on her feet.”

  “We can try.”

  We rolled her onto her sternum tucking her legs under. With John on her head and me on her tail, we tried to lift. John slapped her head with one hand.

  “Yeeough... up, up!” he shouted.

  Nothing happened.

  Next John took her left flank, and I her right. We lifted her hind end up into a praying position, most of her weight resting on her front knees. I held her up by the tail while John slapped her head and ears. She finally struggled to her feet and stood, trembling. Standing on her left side John reached across her back and grabbed her right flank, holding her up against his body.

  “You had best get on with it, Doc. I don’t know how long I can hold her like this.”

  I clipped the hair from her tail head with my bandage scissors, swabbed the exposed skin with alcohol, pulled procaine into the syringe, and pushed a twenty-gauge needle into the intervertebral space between the first and second lumbar vertebrae. I felt the needle pop through the ligamentum flavum and checked to make certain no spinal fluid came out of the needle hub. I injected the procaine and removed the needle. The heifer’s tail went completely limp, and she started to sag.

  John grunted, trying to hold her up.

  “What’s the matter, cowboy?” I asked. “Getting too old to hold up a little heifer?”

  John let go, and she slumped back to the ground.

  “Thanks, John. Jeez, now I’ll have to lie on the ground to get that calf out,” I teased.

  John peered at my face. I cracked a smile to let him know I was joking.

  John smiled in return. “Sorry, big guy. Guess I’m getting a little old.”

  I took off my coat, vest, and shirt and then rolled up the sleeves on my thermal undershirt. I put the vest, damp with blood and amniotic fluid back on.

  “We need to roll her over onto her left side so I can work with my left arm,” I said.

  I splashed some of the now lukewarm water onto the heifer’s perineum, washing off as much mud and feces as I could. A puddle of mud formed where I had to lie down. I lubricated my left hand and arm with a shot of surgical soap and reached into the heifer’s warm vagina. The calf’s head was twisted back to the right, and its right front leg was trapped. I carried two handfuls of the Nolvasan water and some soap into the vagina and lubricated the calf enough to push it back into the uterus. Only the foot of the left leg remained over the rim of the pelvis. I put one of the OB chains around the leg, just above the foot.

  “You need to keep just enough tension on this chain to prevent it being pulled back. OK, John?”

  I reached in again with my left hand putting my third finger in the left eye orbit and my thumb in the right. I squirmed in the puddle of mud until I got my right hand in and pushed back on the chest of the calf with my right hand while pulling its head into the pelvic canal. I got the neck almost straight, and the heifer strained, crushing my forearm against the side of her pelvic bone. When she finally relaxed, I managed to push with the right and pull with the left hand until the calf’s nose came into position. I got another OB chain around the back of the calf’s head and looped it through its mouth. I gave John the free end of that chain to hold the head in position. Finally, I slid my arm along the side of the calf and found the right front leg, still extended backward. I brought it into the proper position.

  Both forelegs were now in the birth canal, and the calf’s head was between them. I put the third OB chain on the other front leg and then went back to the truck for a jar of K-Y jelly and the calf puller. I scooped out a large handful of the K-Y and lubricated the head and shoulders of the huge calf. I placed the calf puller, a pole with a winch at one end and a curved metal “saddle” at the other, in position.

  “I’m going to attach the OB chains to the winch as close to her as possible. When you crank, the winch will advance along the pole pulling on the calf while pushing on the heifer. I’ll be guiding the calf, so I need you to crank, OK?”

  “Sure.”

  I placed the saddle against the rear end of the heifer and attached the OB chains. On my command, John cranked two turns.

  “Whoa,” I said and adjusted the position of the calf’s legs and head. “Go ahead a couple more.” We repeated the process until the calf’s shoulders stuck in the pelvic inlet. I removed the chain on the left leg from the winch, and John cranked out the right leg and head about an inch. I then released the right leg, reattached the left, and we pulled that side out a couple of inches, repeating the process until the shoulders cleared. The calf started to move his head as we pulled the chest and abdomen out, and then his hips hung up. I manipulated the puller from side to side, the heifer strained, and the calf came out in a rush of amniotic fluid tinged with blood.

  John rubbed the bull calf with an almost-dry feed sack. I removed the OB chains and wiped the calf’s nose and mouth with the clean towel I had stuffed into my back pocket on my last trip to the truck. The heifer stretched out on her side but lifted her head and turned to look at the bawling calf. She struggled to her sternum, voided a gallon of urine, and tried to reach around to her calf. John and I moved the calf where she could reach him.

  My arms and hands were slimy. There was a thin film of ice on the water in the bucket. I took the bucket back to the truck, skimmed off the ice, and rinsed off and then took out two sulfa tablets. I deposited the sulfa tablets into the heifer’s uterus and gave her an injection of Combiotic.

  I soaped up and cleaned my hands and arms in the now filthy, cold water as best I could and then replaced my shirt and coat, shivering in the cold.

  “Let’s see if we can get her up before we leave,” I told John, taking the cattle prod from the truck. “You tail her up; I’ll give her a shot from the prod.”

  When tickled with the cattle prod, she bawled and struggled to her feet, then gathered strength, and started licking and nudging the calf. John lifted the calf to his feet, and he took a couple of shaky steps. The heifer nosed him to her flank. He nuzzled around and found a teat.

  John helped me gather and stow all my stuff, and we headed back to the house.

  Kathy was ready with two washbasins full of clean, hot water. I stripped to the waist aga
in and cleaned up.

  “Here, man,” said John, “take this clean undershirt and shirt. You can’t put that filthy stuff back on.”

  “How about another cup of coffee, something to eat?” asked Kathy. “Rosalie had some pie before she zonked.”

  “Nothing to eat, thanks, Kath, but I will have more coffee.”

  I finished the coffee; then we filled my thermos and woke Rosalie. I gave Kathy a hug and John a firm handshake. “You guys are the best, thanks!”

  Rosalie and I were on our way home. I checked with Dick, but no new calls had come in. The night was dark, the stars, completely masked by high clouds. The headlights of the truck searched out the dirt road in front of us. Rosalie sat close, her head against my shoulder as I drove. No lights defined the horizon. We drove through the black void in the glow of the dashboard, isolated from the rest of the world.

  Chapter 20: Distracted

  Three week later, we had been asleep for only half an hour when the phone rang.

  “Harry Waltham has a horse that ran through a barbed wire fence.” It was Dick Mathes.

  I sighed and took down the directions.

  “OK, Dick, thanks. Call him back, and tell him I’ve got the message and I’ll get there as soon as I can. It should take me about twenty minutes.”

  “More like thirty if you leave right away,” said Dick. “The road to their place is not in very good shape.”

  I hung up and looked over at Rosalie who was leaning on her elbow listening. “You want to come along?” I asked. “I could use some company.”

  “Sure,” she said. “I don’t want you falling asleep driving.”

  We got to the farm, drove around to the barn, and found Mr. Waltham holding a common-looking bay gelding by the halter rope. The horse’s pectoral muscles were lacerated, three long gashes that extended across the entire front of his chest. There were also some lacerations high on both front legs, probably the result of the horse rearing back trying to extricate itself from the barbed wire.

  I approached, and the horse shied away. Waltham jerked on the lead rope, making it worse.

  I reached for the rope. “Here, Mr. Waltham, let me take that.”

  He seemed relieved to give it up.

  I calmed the animal and examined the wounds.

  “When did this happen?” I asked. “It’s pretty much dried up, looks old.”

  “Dunno,” Waltham answered. “I found him after dinner when I brought him up from the pasture. The wife and I argued some about calling. She didn’t want to spend any money on him. She thinks I’m a fool to keep him around ’cause we don’t ride or use him for anything. He was my son’s afore he went and got his self killed in that truck accident.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know your son was killed,” I said.

  “Happened ’most two years ago, afore you got here.”

  “Sorry,” I repeated. “Well, this looks a whole lot worse than it is. I have to clean him up and suture these wounds, but he hasn’t cut anything vital. Wounds like this typically heal well. He’ll have some scarring, but it shouldn’t hamper his movement. He’ll need some antibiotics and a tetanus shot, but he should do just fine. I’m going to give him some tranquilizer, and then I can work on him without anybody getting hurt.”

  There was a floodlight on over the door to the barn, but it provided sparse light. The barn door was open. I saw a dirt floor and a lot of machinery.

  “Looks as though there’s no room in the barn to work on him inside, and I’ll need more light than we have here. The floodlight is too high to be much help,” I said. “Let’s take him over in front of my truck. We’ll use the headlights. I’ll need you to hold the lead rope, to prevent him from moving around while I’m working on him. Just hold him loose, though; don’t jerk on the rope, OK?”

  I positioned the gelding about ten feet in front of the truck and went to the back of the truck for the Thorazine.

  “Honey, will you turn on the headlights for me, please? I’m going to need them to see.”

  The headlights went on. Rosalie gasped when she saw the horse’s wounds. “That’s awful. Do you have to put him to sleep?”

  “Nope, it looks a lot worse than it really is. I’m going to tranquilize him, clean everything up, and suture the wounds closed. He’ll be fine.”

  “You’re joking,” she said.

  I smiled. “Would I kid you?”

  I went back to the horse, held off his jugular vein, slipped a needle into the vein, and administered the tranquilizer. Twenty seconds later, the horse was tranquil. I returned to the back of the truck for three bottles of local anesthetic, a sterile syringe, and a twenty-gauge needle. I grabbed a sterile minor surgical pack and opened it on the hood of the truck, along with a package of sterile four-by-four gauze sponges and a pair of sterile surgical gloves. The horse was standing with all four legs slightly spread out, its lower jaw only six inches from the ground.

  “Mr. Waltham, you can help me a lot by holding his head up while I anesthetize the wounds and then clean them up.”

  I squatted like a baseball catcher, in front and slightly to the side of the horse, injecting Procaine into the tissues along the periphery of the wound. I shaved the hair away from all the wound edges and irrigated the wound with a mixture of saline and penicillin rubbing off dirt and debris with gauze sponges. After the wounds and wound edges were clean, I scrubbed my hands and arms and put on the surgical gloves. I took a thumb forceps and a Bard-Parker scalpel handle from the surgery pack and attached the sterile disposable blade to the handle. Cutting off dead tissue, I left bleeding but clean edges. Using a different pair of sterile forceps and a needle holder with a surgical needle threaded with braided nylon suture material, I started suturing.

  After squatting for almost twenty minutes, my legs started aching. I pushed some small stones out of the way with my knees, found a comfortable kneeling position, and continued. From time to time, the horse roused from the tranquilizer and moved about. Each time that happened I stood and then repositioned on my knees.

  I finally finished closing the pectoral muscles and the wounds on the left foreleg. I got up, stretched my back and legs, and moved around to the right side of the horse to finish suturing the right foreleg. The owner was now struggling to hold the gelding’s head up.

  “Just let his head go down,” I told him. “I can work from the side.”

  I got down on my knees again and resumed suturing. A rock under my left knee elicited a stab of pain. I got up and then squatted to finish. The gelding suddenly roused himself, jerked his head up, and at the same moment, brought up his right hind leg and cow-kicked, catching me squarely in the middle of the chest.

  Rosalie, dozing behind the steering wheel of the truck, heard the thump. Her eyes opened, and she watched me flying backward through the air. I landed on my rear end five feet from the horse. She was out of the truck and at my side before I caught my breath.

  Trying desperately to inhale, I looked down and saw I was still holding the needle holder, and thumb forceps. I dropped them and rolled over to my hands and knees. I took a shallow breath and slowly exhaled.

  Rosalie hovered over me, not knowing what to do.

  I took three more short breaths, then rolled onto my side, knees up, and groaned.

  “Dave,” Rosalie said, “I’m calling for an ambulance. Can you breathe? Where does it hurt? I’ll call Joe Lufkin. He’ll be there when we get to the hospital.”

  I shook my head and waved one hand at her, trying to get enough air to talk.

  “No, wait,” I finally croaked. “I’ll be OK; just had the wind knocked out.” I sat up and stripped off the surgical gloves feeling around my sternum and ribs and then checked my pulse rate. “I’m going to be sore for a few days, but nothing’s broken. My heart rate is still normal. I wasn’t paying enough attention to him. I need to put some more local anesthetic in that wound. I must have hit a nerve end to make him react like that. Let me just sit here a minute or two, and then
I’ll finish up.”

  “You are not going to continue working on this animal,” she said. “He could have killed you.”

  “Yeah, well, I am damned lucky I wasn’t still kneeling when he let me have it. He would have crushed my sternum.” I smiled at her and reached out a hand for her to help me up.

  Waltham, mouth agape, was stunned to immobility. He finally let go of the lead rope and came over to us.

  “Here, let me help, Doc. Jeez, I didn’t know the worthless SOB could move that fast. Are you sure you’re all right? Here let me help you up.”

  He grabbed me by the opposite elbow and helped Rosalie lift me to my feet.

  I bent over at the waist and took some more deep breaths and then walked around the yard for a couple of minutes, hands on my hips. The gelding started to wander off, so I went over, took the lead rope, and led him back to the front of the truck.

  “Here, take him again,” I told Waltham. “He’s still plenty tranquilized. I’m going to re-inject with local anesthetic and finish up.”

  Rosalie retrieved the dirty instruments from the ground and placed them on the hood of the truck, watching me carefully as I moved about. I scrubbed my hands and arms again, and put on another pair of sterile gloves. My surgical pack had another needle holder, but I had to wipe off the thumb forceps with sterile gauze.

  “Honey, in the back of the truck in the case next to the wall on the left side, you’ll find some bottles of alcohol. Would you get one, open it, and pour some on these thumb forceps? Thanks.”

  While she poured the alcohol, I looked her in the eye and smiled. “I’m all right, baby, really. I’ve been hurt worse. I’ll be fine. I just want to finish up here and go home.”

  I re-anesthetized the wound edges and then finished suturing. After putting things away, I gave the gelding separate injections of penicillin and tetanus antitoxin.