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“What’s the matter, city boy?” Cricket asked, when she took in how wide my eyes had gotten.
I checked my expression. “Nothing.” She laughed anyway.
The cow or heifer or whatever it was cried out.
“Poor thing, she’s distressed. The heifer’s not pushing,” Cricket said.
She bent for the chains.
“What’s the difference between a cow and a heifer?” I asked.
“A heifer is a cow who’s yet to give birth.”
“Ah.”
She wrapped the middle of the chain around the calf’s legs.
“You’re really doing this,” I stated.
She looked at me like I was a moron. “What else should I do? Let her and the calf die?” She began pulling on the rubber-lined grips. “See if we can incite her to push,” Cricket grunted. She pulled a little harder, but the heifer didn’t seem to want to cooperate. Cricket sat down and positioned her legs against the stall for leverage and began pulling a little harder. The animal cried out. “Come on, girl.”
Several minutes passed where Cricket would pull then release, pull then release, but the cow wouldn’t help at all.
“I’m gonna need to do all the work, I guess. Stubborn little thing.”
Cricket pulled, her face tight, her eyes crinkled. She pulled until the tip of the nose was peeking through. She kept pulling but wasn’t making the progress she wanted, I could tell. She looked up at me, appraising me.
“No,” I said.
“Why not, greenhorn? You got something against getting those pretty digs dirty? Listen, I can call Ethan down here, but it’d be easier if you volunteered. This calf’s pretty big and the heifer’s pelvis is really narrow. I’m going to need some help.”
When she mentioned Ethan, I’d already stepped forward, pushing up my sleeves. “What do I do?”
“Just position yourself like I did and gently, keyword gently, pull. Try to wedge the calf back and forth. We don’t want anything tearing.”
I nodded and sat on the floor, bracing my feet against the metal stall and gripping the handles. I gently pulled, shifting the calf back and forth steadily until the head popped out. I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Keep going,” Cricket prodded.
I repositioned my hands on the handles to get a better grip and pulled once more. I was trying to be gentle but the calf wasn’t budging.
“Be a little more aggressive,” she encouraged. “Give it a little more.”
I pulled harder and the shoulders started appearing, then the belly, and finally the entire calf spilled out and into my lap. I’d never experienced anything like that before and it was incredibly exhilarating. I smiled down at the baby but it wasn’t breathing.
“She’s not breathing,” I said, panicking a little.
“Hold on,” Cricket said calmly.
She took the calf and dragged it to a stall lined with hay. She sat down with it and stuck pieces of straw up its nose. I’d stood and followed her in by then.
“What does that do?”
“It stimulates breathing. Gets him to hack up any junk in his upper respiratory tract.”
She rubbed the little thing’s chest back and forth, massaging, and encouraging it, speaking softly to it. Sure enough, the calf started breathing, its eyes dazed with little control over its muscles. Its little head bobbed back and forth, the muscles unpracticed. Cricket tucked its legs underneath it and propped it against a wall of hay.
“There you go, baby,” she said.
