A pleasant Saturday afternoon with the ladies
Bill Rea

Men have spent centuries, if not longer, lamenting on their inability to understand the opposite sex.

Much literature has been devoted to this topic. I don't think there are many men who have graduated from their teens who would be unable to add to the pile of documentation, and that includes me.

I will grant that my success with women over the years has not been outstanding, although it has improved, and I have a happy marriage of almost 10 years as proof of that. But with that and a couple of other limited exceptions, there haven't been many women I have been able to charm.

Indeed, I have even had trouble with four-legged females, such as our cat, not to mention my brother-inlaw's cows.

Saturday was the latest edition of a tradition into which I married almost 10 years ago, in which my wife Beth enlists my assistance in helping her dairy farmer brother Paul vaccinate his herd against something called Bovine Viral Diarrhea.

These annual events usually take place in January (I'm told Paul times them to coincide with his birthday) so there I was Saturday afternoon, on duty in the barn, pulling my weight worth of uncooperative Holsteins.

There were other helpers as well.

Beth enlisted my services for this task the first January we were married. She had approached me about a week in advance, and I agreed to be on hand. In the intervening days leading up to it, had casually mentioned the plans for the coming Saturday to my brother Michael, and he was intrigued enough to offer up his services as well.

Thus it has unfolded that these two city boys are annually introduced to life in a barn, guiding the ladies into their stalls, and then guiding them outside after Paul has rammed the needle into their behind regions (Paul always gets the fun part of the job, since they are his cows).

I make it a habit of preparing myself for this annual ritual, making sure my schedule is as clear as can make it (not terribly difficult in January) and dressing down as much as possible. I also dig out my old pair of construction boots, because cows are known to stomp on toes if their bovine dander gets aroused. The boots are a souvenir of a summer job I had about 30 years ago, building clay tennis courts. The truth is, however, these boots have been exposed over the years to a lot more cow poo than HAR-TRU.

The three of us were all ready to go Saturday, with Beth and her mother Ethel also on deck in the barn. Paul's son Jacob was there too for a while, sort of supervising things in that pushy fashion that only a fouryear old could get away with. Such, alas, could not be said for the ladies who were the object of the exercise, or at least not all of them. Most of the girls were fairly co-operative, entering the barn without much fuss, but there were three very stubborn ones who preferred to stay outside. It was quite a scene trying to convince them to come in.

Now it is generally known that cows are not ferocious, or overly aggressive. But they are large animals, and if there's some place they would rather not go to, the average able-bodied man is somewhat limited in what he can do about it. As well, the ground in the barn yard was not in the best condition for three middleaged men to go running about in. Paul lamented a couple of times that a bit of frost might have made things a bit easier. Alas, with the recent mild temperatures, the ground outside was a gooey and gloppy wet mixture of mud and that other stuff associated with cows that I probably need not describe further. It was ideal for cows who were trying to be evasive, and rough on the guys who were trying to coax them into a barn.

It added up to a fun afternoon. There was some yelling, and a few words that I can't put into print. I did hear the word "witches" applied once, with some possible reference to MacBeth.

But there was more fun, once the actual vaccinating started. Part of the drill is once a cow gets the needle, she's to be guided outside, thus avoiding confusion over who's had her needle and who hasn't. But some of the cows didn't want to go outside again, and a couple of the ones we were able to get out the door kept trying to get back in.

So we had quite a lot of frustration.

But at length the task was successfully completed, with little in the way of injuries. The cows may not have been overly co-operative, but there was nothing in the way of kicking or stomping, at least on the part of the cows. If you have never been kicked in the shin by an agitated cow, let me assure you from my personal experience, it hurts. Paul took a solid hoof in the knee last year. Nothing like that happened this year.

The job was done for another year, and we later all sat back and reflected on the struggles we had endured, and I then went out to cover the junior C hockey game smelling like cow dung.

But after we got home for some unwinding, Beth came out with a rather disturbing thought. She observed that it's only about 12 months before we will all have to go through this again.

"Can we at least get through Christmas before we start worrying about that?" I implored her.