Living on a farm, you get many unexpected things. Around 8:30 on June 26, 2015, I was in the middle of watching The Briefcase and eating some blueberries. My father, basically the head master of the farm, comes inside and says, "We have an animal missing."
I groaned and asked if I had to go, which was a simple no before Dad walked out. Beginning of summer and being this late at night, there would be bugs and I didn't want to leave my food or comfy spot on the couch. However, after a few minutes of internal debate, I told my mum to guard my berries from our cats and off I went.
Running through one of our pastures, I was easily able to catch up with my dad. In the pasture were a total of seventeen cattle. Three of them were overgrown steers (bulls without their parts) and the rest were pregnant females. However, when counting the cows earlier, dad only counted sixteen by the feed bunks. Whenever one of our critters has a baby, they like the privacy and shelter of the woodland further back. This was where the missing cow was expected to be.
Shortly into the woods, not even ten yards, Dad held up a silencing hand and listened to the deafening silence. You could hear the barn fan in the distance along with one heavily sighed moo, but nothing from the woods. He pointed in a direction and led me around an area so we would come up beside the momma and her baby (if she already had it).
Of course, he predicted correctly. Right where he sniffed out was Lilac, #31 in our books, and her newborn baby girl. Although we don't know the hours of hen she was born, it was between 3 o'clock in the afternoon 'til 8:30. The baby was sparkling clean and running after it's mom like a little mountain bike. Yes, a mountain bike. While herding the two out of the woods, Lilac liked to take the paved route. Her baby, on the other hand, was jumping over rocks and fallen trees. There even came a point where she stood on a rock and "surfed" it down a small rock wall, not even falling. This rightfully earned her the nickname Badass in my books.
Once we got Lilac and little "Badass" to the edge of the pasture, we opened a gate to a smaller one filled with five calves in their "cow teen" years. These little ones were like trained dogs. If you used the right tone of voice and hand motions (which I am the only one to have mastered), they will stay, come, and keep eye contact with you on command. It was easy to keep them distanced while we coaxed Lilac through the fence, but the new mother and baby weren't the only ones. Two other pregnant cows crossed through the gate. One went back to the designated dry cow pasture with a simple wave, but the other was running everywhere. When we finally got #3, Ashley, back to the gate, she made a last minute run for it and tangled a fence wire around her feet. Ashley ran and freed herself, but not before dismantling a part of the fence.
Once Ashley was mildly cursed at and shooed back into her pen and the fence was temporarily thrown together for the night, Lilac and her baby were led through one more pasture and into the barn. The baby, later properly named Butercup (so cliche), was fed with some of her mom's milk and some warmed up, regular milk. Why? Well, Miss. Lilac here didn't produce much milk for the child. That, however, didn't matter as you know how babies are. They will eat when they want to eat, and little Buttercup was not hungry. Drinking a little bit, Buttercup was laid in some hay at her mother's nose and the barn was shut down for the night. I never knew how The Briefcase ended as the whole ordeal ended at 10:32. But we have a new edition to the farm and I got to watch Criminal Minds instead, so it all worked out in the end. :)
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