Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

Mi corazón es muy frio

Julie Carter

Love on demand. That's my definition of Valentine's Day, a commercial holiday conveniently placed between Christmas and Easter designed to feed retailers and give people a reason to spend money.

I've been on the receiving end of a number of lovely red and white somethings: jewelry, candy, flowers and cards. All appreciated, just not necessary.

The head cowboy got to town late one year and all that was left were the cards written in Spanish. Mine said something about my corazón and forever.

He ate the chocolates on the way back to the ranch and, with no apology, told me he knew I was on a diet and he sure didn't want to contribute to any failure of that effort.

In the meantime, that same day it had snowed about 10 inches after it rained for a few hours.

The corrals were knee-deep in mud covered by a deceivingly benign-looking white blanket of snow. It made a mush that sucked off your boots and hindered any kind of movement other than a determined trudge.

I was on heifer-calving duty while the head cowboy was somewhere else. The weather dictated frequent checks to make sure some new, wet, steaming baby calf wasn't born in a mud hole and chilled down before he ever got a chance at life.

Heifers by their very youth and nature are stupid, skittish and determined to be contrary in spite of what's in their best interest. When weather is bad, the calving kicks into a higher gear just because.

I cut laboring heifers out of the OB corral and penned them in warm stalls as they neared the birthing moment. That in itself was a visual as they ducked and ran and turned and did everything except go through the gate I needed them to go through.

I was in packer boots, every warm piece of clothing I owned, and looked like the Michelin man in a dance competition. Moving fast to cut off a heifer as she tried to cut back was not a pretty sight.

In all this, there was one heifer on the very far end of the corrals, a long alleyway from the barn, that decided to lie down and have her calf in the mud and snow in spite of my efforts. By the time I got to her, she was well into the business of pushing him out into a puddle of ice-cold mush.

She got up the minute she saw me and came at me with definite intent to harm. I deftly jumped (OK, that may be an exaggeration) behind the gate I had just come through.

I let her run through the gate opening, preferable to running over the top of me. I quickly shut a couple gates behind her for safekeeping while I rescued the slimy newborn that was blinking and sputtering trying to get his first breaths.

The calf weighed more than he should have for a first calf and was long, wet and slippery. I lifted him up by his front end, hugging his back to me, my grip tight around his body just behind his front legs. His back legs still touched the ground and I knew all I could do was walk backwards and drag him up the alley to the barn.

In no particular order, I tugged and trudged and grunted and pulled. About 10 feet from the barn door, I went down. My foot had pulled out of my boot and my sock was fast soaking up freezing wet corral muck.

I was sitting on my frozen "corazón" with a slimy calf in my lap, trying to figure out how to get out from underneath him, get my boot and start over.

As perfect as timing could be, it was then the head cowboy came around the corner of the barn.

He first grinned and then with decidedly poor judgment, he laughed. He rescued the calf off my lap while asking, "Was this all you got done today?"

It was probably a week after the snow was gone before things thawed out at the ranch house. Valentine's Day had come and gone but there was no doubt, between the calving events, the card in Spanish and the empty chocolate box, it was destined to be one of the most memorable ones.

Julie says Happy Valentines Day to all those ranch wives working the calving pen. She can be reached for comment at www.julie-carter.com.