A Little Cafecito in the Night - Part 1

And so it was on a beautiful late-spring night, a young cow, a vaquillona, had gotten pregnant too young and was having a difficult first birth.  Despite our efforts, a bull from another ranch had gotten through our fence.  Before we realized it, he'd been there a while.

Our ever-vigilant gaucho, Cristian, spotted her in the fading light of a long day of work and went to assist.

Normally, my wife and I would have pitched into what became a late-night effort ...but we had just arrived from a trip to Capital and were sleeping like pìgs among flowers by 9pm.

Cristian and his wife Andrea were left alone to restrain the first-time mommy with the birth.  She held the restraining ropes that had been wrapped around two stout fence posts while he used his skills to save both animals.  It was indeed difficult.  The mother was too small and the calf too large.  It took forever and left them all worn-out and/or traumatized.

The next morning, my missus found the newborn in the middle of a shallow pond doing his best to stand.  His mother had rejected him and that meant he was on the road to ruin.  She waded out without her boots to pull his tiny frame out of the muck then called to the gaucho who informed her of the last night´s proceedings.  They corralled cow & calf in hopes that they might bond.

It soon became apparent that was not meant to be.

A calf who has become lost or separated from his mother, or rejected by her, is a called a guacho ("WHA-cho" not gaucho.)  The name is somtimes applied to people who are a nuisance or a deliberate pain in the ass.  In English, the word is "stray" and, although not often applied to people, I do remember a John Wayne movie in which he inquired of a lovely lady being chatted-up in a saloon, "Pardon me, ma'am, but is that stray a-botherin´ you?"

The needy whining and moaning of strays can get under the skin of just about anybody.

Our hired hands get a half-day off on Saturdays.  So at four that afternoon, my wife and I dutifully pulled-on our rubber boots and trekked through about a 1/2km of muddy fields to the isolated little corral.  In case the privacy of that place wasn´t enough incentive for mother and child to begin what should come naturally, Cristian had collected a dinner of the mother cow´s fresh milk that morning.  We warmed it gently and brought it along.

The mother was still giving the "patita" to the baby, a little kick that says, "get away from me" in any language ...she wasn´t too happy to see us either.  Although she was just a "girl", mommy-cow still out-weighed me by double and, although her rejection seemed permanent, nature still gave her bad vibes about the attention we were giving her calf.  I got between her and her calf while my wife fed the hours-old weakling from a bottle.

I´ve never seen a guacho live for long.  Mothers' milk with its colostrom can´t be adequately substituted with "el sustituto" sold by vets and feed stores.  Supermarket milk even when fortified with egg yolk and powdered milk just isn´t what nature intended.  The rejected calves usually die, the dogs eat their flesh and bones, and the gaucho preserves the hide for sale or his personal use.

My animal-loving missus was already becoming way too emotionally involved with this doomed creature.  She demanded we go into town to buy milk for the little guy.  Although it was late on a Saturday, I decided to feign sympathy in favor of a couple of ingredients for chicken salad and maybe a couple of ice-cold beers.  Miraculously, the strores were still open and we made it back with enough daylight to gather a load of straw for garden mulch.

At 5am, the alarm clock sounded and I found that my missus was already gone.  I dressed and trudged out to the kitchen for some cafeine.  I found her there with the order of battle already formulated.  As it was still very muddy from recent rains, it was decreed that we would take the tractor out to the little corral and feed the guacho breakfast if the mother was still rejecting him.  It was firmly implied that there would be no time for me to linger in the process of cafeinating myself.

My sleepy trepidation at firing up the 40 year old tractor with no fuel-guage was surpassed only by the idea of getting our pickup truck stuck in the mud ...so I went to the tractor.  On the way to its shed, I became even more afraid that it was still so wet that the tractor might get stuck.  Though my mind was as hazy as the fields in that early light, I resolved that my cooperation now would allow me to avoid retribution later as my wife mourned the calf's death.

So with milk and missus I clambered into the tractor cab and gingerly navigated through the various fence-gates without knocking down any posts ...and ventured into the mud with the sunrise in my eyes.

Through the wettest winter on record, compounded by a normal spring, the best paths through the fields had been reduced to swamp.  There were places I was afraid to even walk for fear of sinking to the knees.  The useless rear-view mirror only showed only my father´s early-morning grouchy-face back at me.  This was a fools errand.  Sinking our tractor for no real reason would be an expensive mini-tragedy.

In the early light, I made my way through ruts and almost-ruts and a few quick lane-changes ...then through a dreaded, unavoidable moat of mud and standing water.  I had confidence that the two big tractor tires could displace our weight ...but the two little front wheels looked like they could sink.  And sink they did ...a little ...but the big smokin´ Deutz-Allis perservered and we were out of danger.

Sneaking the tractor thru the old corral gate, I pulled up as close as possible without inducing animal terror.  My missus had informed me along the way that the calf had gotten a tractor ride to the corral ...and he might need one back if he and his mommy still weren't getting along.  I coudn't believe all three of us could fit in the tiny cab and I said so.  "I'LL WALK BACK," told me that we would find a way.

Mommy cow was crazy.  She wanted out of the corral and out of her "teen-motherhood."  There were two rubbed-raw patches on her chest and both of her front knees were abraded from repeated launches at the smooth wires of the corral fence.

The whole situation was nuts.  We needed to release the crazed cow who was obviously not going to make a maternal bond.  The calf was obviously going get his "tractor ride" back to the house and ...I wasn´t sure how my missus was getting back.

A couple quarts of warm milk both calmed and enlivened the little calf (which I began to refer to as "the calfy-cito", using the Spanish diminutive ending on the English word.

I cajoled the missus into giving up on the mother and letting her out of the corral.  I didn´t relish the thought of putting the newborn on the tiny hard metal floor of the tractor-cab because that just seemed to be more torture for the little fella who had been born into a mess already.

But if that was gonna be, it was gonna be.  I unchained the gate for mommy-cow and scooped up the little newborn.  His legs were kinda long so I asked my missus to make sure that I was getting all of his not so tiny frame into the cab.  I got back behind the wheel and, amazingly, my wife made it in and found a place to perch.

The way back proved to be different. The sun was from behind.  None of my smooth moves from the way-in were evident in that light!  I was in treachous waters once again ...this time with an extra passenger who wouldn´t walk away from a sinking.  I had doubts that we two-leggers could either.

I couldn´t find my way.  I was probably more scared of sinking than I had been in the beginning due to the crash of my over-confidence at having just been this way before.

I baled-out of my original path.  I switched to less trodden ground only to find it worse than the ruts.  Cutting across all the tracks and ditches made by outside contractors made me wonder if I'd ever actually seen a tractor turn-over on its side.  I cursed about everything but especially at how bald the big tires had become ...trying my best not to think about not knowing how much fuel was left.  Seen from above, my way back must have looked insane.  From inside, my raving, my wife gripping my seat, and the poor tortured little bastard trying to keep his hooves out of the way of the peddles and controls while bouncing on the steel floor was truly nuts.

Somehow, we made it through.  I parked the tractor close to the garden, a little sheepish at my display on the return trip, and unloaded the little calf into an unused pen.  Cafeine and the kind of "American breakfast" that I can´t prepare when the gauchos are looking called me to the kitchen.  Little "cafecito" would occupy my missus for a couple of days.  It would be a fine weekend.