The Brindled Cow

So today's animal adventure started about three o'clock.  It seems so many things start about three o'clock.  I don't know why.  I guess if things started early in the morning, they'd finish up in a normal fashion and there wouldn't be all this...stress and tension...overnight.  Never let it be said Life isn't a raving Drama Queen.

Anyway, I got a harried call from my father asking if I could go to our vets and pick up meds that were being prepared as we were talking.  Of course I could; I was just watching TV and being lazy.  I put on shoes and an old sweatshirt and made a flying trip in to town, the second time in three days I've been to the vet's office.  Right now, it is not a place with happy memories for me. 

I picked up the stuff and a very odd looking tool used to shove really huge pills down a cow's throat and came back home.  I took the meds to Mom and Dad's house and walked up the hill to the barn to find that they'd corralled one of the brindled heifers.  She's in bad shape.  We spent the next ten minutes putting a rope around her neck and medicating her.  Then she laid down and the real problems began.

We tried and tried to get her back up on her feet, but she weighs about 400 lbs.  Four hundred pounds of weak and uncooperative angus are not very easy to manipulate.  Mom finally managed to irritate her to her feet by continuing to try to feed her until she got tired of it and got up to get away from it.  She stood for about ten minutes and then she slowly folded back down again.  Although she seemed a little more alert, she didn't get up again.

She was pitiful.  I petted her and soothed her as best I could for awhile longer, but eventually, I just came home.  There's nothing else to do now.  Either she will recover with the help of the medicine or she won't.  I don't think she's going to survive.  I am getting awfully tired of death.