Just Don’t Name It

I knew we were doomed.  Any sentence that starts out with, “Sweetie, I know we said no more animals, BUT” is destined to lead to…. more animals.

Our Friend the Farmer had called My Loving Spouse offering us a calf with a bum leg.  The calf was a twin and born with a frozen hind leg making it hard for it to keep up with the herd, especially in the winter.  The Farmer thought it would get along fine with our two horses, thereby giving it a new ‘herd’.  I answered My Loving Spouse in the manner of the Teen Boys, “What?… Hun?”, cleared my brain, then asked a very important question, one I’ve learned while living here in the country.  “Is he intact?”  In other words, did he have all his cattle man parts?  Would he grow into a Bull?  I am learning a LOT, but castrating cattle is not on my list of ‘Stuff I Still Want To Learn’.

Our Friend the Farmer advised us to go and have a look at the calf, so we dutifully went to look at it.  Our going to ‘look’ at it was a bit ironic as, we don’t know anything about cattle.  We looked at it and it looked back at us.  It definitely looked like… a calf with a bum leg.   We said, “Of course we’d like it, thank you very much.  Is it intact?”  This is when we learned that he was a she, so we were safe from the whole learning to castrate cattle issue.

The Grand To-Do list was amended once more and out we went to work on our fences.  The fences that keep horses in do not always keep cattle in or in this case one small calf in, even if she doesn’t move very fast so we dutifully made the improvements to our fencing for our ever-expanding herd.

This calf is to be fattened and eventually suppose to make it to, well, to the dinner table (yes, stay tuned for that adventure), so with this in mind, some people told us, “Just don’t name it”.  Oh, right, good advice to this family that named their vacuum cleaner!  The odds of us not naming an animal are lower than low!

Upon being informed that we were getting a calf, the texts back from the offspring were just… precious….

“What? A cow?”

“YOU’RE GETTING A COW….”

“A three-legged cow?!”

“If you haven’t thought of any names yet, there’s always Tripod, Double-Double Sirloin or Charlene Roast”

“You can call her Tri-Tip”

“CAN WE NAME THE COW ELSIE???????????”

“Does this mean I can get a bunny?”

Welcome to our world, Elsie Gump.