I grew up in rural America, in a small town featuring a population of just over 1,000 people. As a result, some people say I'm a wealth of folksy wisdom, while others point out that my humor tends to revolve around potty talk. I can't refute either of those claims.
Because of the rural climate many, if not most, of my classmates were farm kids, which means they were kids who lived on farms. Now, farm life is somewhat different than city life, or even town life, for that matter. Farm life, by it's very nature, means that farm kids are introduced, at an early age, to an ingrained familiarity with livestock and other assorted animals.
Small town kids, such as myself, were not gifted with the livestock familiarity bestowed upon our farm kid peers. For example, my early inability to distinguish between cows and bulls once resulted in me running headlong, terrified, into an electrified fence. Another time, a large sow carried me several yards, with me straddling her snout, before dropping me on a gravel drive and stomping on my chest with her evil, cloven foot.
My lack of livestock knowledge also resulted in perhaps the rudest introduction ever to what is often referred to as the "miracle of birth."
I was either in second or third grade when, one day, it was announced that our class was going to take a field trip to the local veterinarian clinic. I was excited, because my understanding of veterinarian clinics was that they dealt with puppies and kittens which, technically, is often the case. However, in rural vet clinics, they also deal considerably, if not predominantly, in farm livestock.
We saw all sorts of wonderful animals during that magical day. We saw horses, and we saw piggies, and we saw cows and, yes, we saw puppies and kittens. And then, at the end of the tour, we were treated to an extra-special event; the birth of a baby calf.
Except, it wasn't the kind of birth I was expecting, or even really knew could happen. We were ushered into a large room, with a concrete floor with a drain in the middle. Standing on one end of the room was a bored-looking holstein cow, lazily chewing her cud. I was keeping a close eye on her backside, where I was expecting a baby cow to fall out, like in that one PBS nature special I'd watched once.
Instead, a man wearing plastic gloves applied a liquidy swipe of some sort of yellow substance along the cow's side. Then, after a couple minutes, the man returned and, right before my youthful, innocent eyes, he sliced that cow's side open using what I believed must have been the sharpest knife in the history of cutlery. The cow's side slit right open, sounding for all the world like that vet had zipped up a very long coat zipper.
I stood there, mouth agape, trying to absorb exactly what it was that had just happened. That cow, I thought, should have been in extreme discomfort but, no, she stood there, continuing to chew her cud in a lazy fashion. But then, THEN, the vet returned yet again and, with the assistance of another man, started digging around inside that cow, with one man up to his shoulders. What were they doing? Were they trying to get in? What was happening?
Just then, one of the men pulled forth a pair of wet, glistening hooves and my mind, having forgotten completely that the cow was pregnant in the first place, somehow erroneously concluded that the two men were somehow pulling the cow inside-out. I knew, deep down, that the conclusion simply had to be wrong, but it was the only conclusion I could conjure at the time.
Then, thankfully, they pulled out the rest of the calf and tossed it, rather unceremoniously I thought, onto the concrete floor, where it lay, dripping all sorts of birth-related liquids into the drain. The men then set about repairing the mother cow's side, while the calf continued to lay and drip on the concrete floor.
It was then that my brain reset itself as it sorted out what had just transpired. It was at that point that I made a mental note that life isn't always exactly like it's shown in those PBS nature specials.
Which is some pretty folksy wisdom, when you think about it.
Posted by Ryan at January 4, 2005 04:30 PMThat's pretty rough for a bunch of kids. Why would they do a c section on a cow that was not apparently in labor? Don't answer that, I was just thinking out loud, so to speak. I bet some of the parents were pissed that their kids saw that though.......jeeze.
Posted by: Donna at January 5, 2005 04:09 AMThe reason that they'll sometimes do a quasi-C-section on a cow prelabor is that the calf is in the mother cow backwards. If the cow were to go into labor with the calf turned backwards, it would almost always kill both of them or kill the mother in the process it would take to get the calf out safely. So, to avoid that, the vet simply goes in and gets the calf a little early.
Yeah, before you ask, I was one of the "farm kids", and still live on parents' farm today... lame, I know, so shut up already!
Posted by: Rick at January 5, 2005 08:48 AMActually, Donna, it wasn't all that traumatic or anything, just really unexpected. Pretty much all us kids just absorbed what happened and went bounding about our day. It feeds into my theory that kids can handle a whole lot more than adults think they can.
Posted by: Ryan at January 5, 2005 09:04 AM"[K]ids can handle a whole lot more than adults think they can."
A truer statement has perhaps never been uttered.
That was hysterical. Thanks. :)
When I was in kindergarten, I came home on my birthday and my Mom immediately called me into the "mud room" off the back door. "Hurry up". As I stepped into the room, the first thing to hit me eyes was my dog, Nona, lying on a dog bed with the front end of a puppy slurping its way out. Plop. *lick* *lick* *lick* *lick*....
Meanwhile, a local town (Glenview, IL) has removed all the bulls from a town-owned historic farm because they're afraid that kiddies might accidentally see "random acts of nature".
This is about the best possible way to introduce a kid to the facts of life. Okay, the bovine C-Section is a bit harsh -- but I think I would have been more along the lines of "Coooool!" than been scarred for life.
Grown ups are wimps. :)
Posted by: Strider at January 5, 2005 11:11 AMThanks Rick, I hadn't thought that through. Still. Yuck. And although I probably would have been one of the kids that was standing around going Cooool, that still doesn't mean I'd want a bunch of little kids to see that. Grown ups are wimps in alot of ways, it starts when they are about 18. My death and dying class went to an anatomy class and got to view a body that had been donated, and I made two people throw up, and one pass out when I poked the body in the eye because it already had the plastic inserts in there that they use to keep the eyes closed. I was going cooollll, and everyone else, including the teacher was grossing out. It was pretty funny. (I'd worked ambulance years ago, so I'm pretty hardened to that kind of thing.) I laughed hard at them, and still surprised myself that I knew almost all the organs still, and it's been like 20 years ago that I learned all that stuff. Sorry Ryan, I tend to ramble on and on.
Posted by: Donna at January 5, 2005 08:11 PM"Small town kids, such as myself, were not gifted with the livestock familiarity bestowed upon our farm kid peers."
So what were you gifted with? What super-powers did town kids of that age have to lord it over the farm-kids? It can't have been all one way. Elucidate, dear chap.
Posted by: Simon at January 6, 2005 11:05 AMWell, for one thing, and perhaps most importantly, we town kids picked up an uncanny knack for mastering video games.
Posted by: Ryan at January 6, 2005 11:12 AMWe had a TV program(me) on BBC1 (in the UK) based upon the writings of one James Herriot (http://www.jamesherriot.org/works.php), which would regularly feature said (fictional) vet donning shoulder-length rubber gloves and . . . er, 'losing his watch'. I must point out that this was a Sunday dinnertime (5.30pm) show in the late 70s, but as far as livestock went it was a bit like WWF - no holds barred, but put on for the cameras. I attained a visceral familiarity, and the 'birds and bees' held no fears, thanks to Auntie Beeb. But horses for courses. If you're growing up in a provincial neighbourhood then I guess it's a priority for parents to get kids tuned in to this stuff. If you're urban, then it must be the same with corporate takeovers etc.
Posted by: Simon at January 6, 2005 11:24 AM"Well, for one thing, and perhaps most importantly, we town kids picked up an uncanny knack for mastering video games."
Yeah, you town kid bastards always owned my ass no matter what video game we were playing. I'm still spiteful.
Posted by: Rick at January 6, 2005 11:27 AM
Stumble It!
