The sun hadn’t yet shown itself above my mountains to the east, but there was enough light for me to be well into my regular morning chore routine. I’d just finished feeding the two bottle calves, a chore necessitated by a couple of unfortunate consequences of running cows in rough country. I hated messing with bottle-feeding calves, but I figured I’d tough it out until the cows came off the summer range, at which time I’d sort off the dinks and leppies, my two bottle orphans included, and run them to town on a Thursday sale day.
For the most part, things had gone well with my little bovine urchins. Not only had I kept them alive, but they had both grown and, dare I say, thrived under my care. I was sure I was going to come out a winner on this deal. I’d almost come to appreciate our twice-daily chats. With the sound of the gentle clank of the chain on the gate, they’d come trotting up to meet me. I’d dump a gallon of milk replacer mixture into a feed pan for the calf that had the bucket figured out and then hold the bottle for the less astute of the two. The conversations were mostly one-sided, and I didn’t get the response from the calves that the dogs would usually give me, but the practice lent me a sort of internal comfort at the start and end to each day.
On this particular fall morning, however, something was a little off. The little black calf took longer than the usual 62 seconds to finish his bottle, and I noticed some green snot on his nose as he let out a cough when I pulled the bottle away from him. It was more of the same that night, so I gave him a dose of antibiotics and figured that would be the end of it. I’ve dealt with plenty of sick calves and feedlot cattle in my day, so I was pretty sure of myself and my preferred medical regimen. The next day, though, he’d taken a turn for the worse. I gave the patient what I figured to be a surefire dose of my secret, higher-priced combination of drugs, fully expecting him to pull out of his funk. The only noticeable response I got from him was that he went completely off feed. Within four days of my noticing his sickness, he died. This was not my preferred outcome.
This certainly wasn’t my first experience with failure, disappointment and loss in the cattle business, and I’m unfortunately quite certain that it won’t be my last. It was just one little calf, and I long ago learned to work through the stages of ranching grief pretty quickly. Still, it’s a process I know I have to navigate, and regardless of the speed of the recovery, it never passes without its own brand of torment. I was ticked off that I’d receive nary a cent for my efforts and disappointed that I’d failed utterly and completely in what should have been a simple project. And though I realize the place of livestock in my life and in the grander scheme of things, I have to admit that I was sad at the loss of my little friend, one of God’s creatures that had been placed under my stewardship. I’d gone to great lengths to rescue the little black calf when he got separated from his mother by miles of sagebrush and rough, high desert country in the days after we turned out on the mountain earlier that summer. When I got him home and he learned to suck the calf bottle, I figured I had a true success story going, only to see it go up in smoke, as it were. It seemed like such a shame, almost cruel, that it would unceremoniously end up out in the brush on the dead pile.
As I continued “on to the next one” and with the normal business of life, the lyrics of a song I’d recently heard came to mind:
“… I've seen that Cinderella fairy tale go up in cigarette smoke.
I've seen two hearts bet it all and still end up broke …”
I figured that was a pretty accurate summation of much of what life is. Despite our best efforts, despite our hard work, best intentions or virtuous motivations, misfortune and tragedy happen. It’s not wholly inaccurate to say there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s an inescapable truth about life. But thankfully, there are other truths about life that can banish the dimness of despair that would wish to govern how we view our darkest circumstances.
As we celebrate the Christmas season, let’s not forget that light will always overcome darkness. Let’s try to illuminate that light for our fellow travelers on life’s unpredictable road. Appreciate and seek the one whose birth we honor this time of year, the one who would leave the 99 to find the one.
—Merry Christmas
