Dear Mother,
Today we learned how to examine a cow to properly feel her fetus. Because you don’t want to introduce bacteria into the uterus, you perform this little exam by going in through the cow’s rectum. Most of the cows are surprisingly cooperative with this procedure. Perhaps years of students have practiced on them and they are used to this invasion. Perhaps they are slightly perverted cows. I’m not sure which, but I was too occupied with trying to accomplish this feat to give it a great deal of thought at the time.
In order to perform this exam, you first don a rubber glove that reaches all the way to your armpit. The next step should seem obvious, but I encountered a slight obstacle. I am only five feet tall, so obviously, my shoulder does not even reach quite to that height. The portion of cow anatomy to which I aspired was a bit higher than my shoulder. Since I would have to reach downward once I accomplished entry, it became necessary for me to find a bucket or a box to stand on. I grabbed an empty milk crate that was nearby, turned it upside down behind the cow, donned my glove, lubricated it, climbed onto the milk crate, moved the cow’s tail aside with my left hand and began to slide my right hand inside. I guess my arm was in a few inches past my elbow when two things happened. First, I realized that when my arm became fully inserted, I was going to be very close to this cow, breast to butt, you might say, and I was beginning to wonder where, at that point, does one put one’s face? The second thing was that the cow clamped down on my arm with a force I would not have thought possible. I began to understand what a mouse feels like once a boa constrictor has gotten hold of it.
I felt around for the fetus, but my hand and arm were quickly becoming numb from lack of circulation. I could not tell what might be fetus and what was cow poop. I decided to withdraw my arm and try again… perhaps on another, more accommodating cow. But Miss Bessie would not let me go. She clamped harder. I began to teeter back and forth on the milk crate on which I was performing a tiptoe balancing act. After a few wild wobbles, I lost my balance. When I realized I was going to fall, I grabbed the first thing I could find. Bessie’s tail. Apparently, tail pulling is against the rules, because Bessie let out a terrible bellow. The effort caused her to release her grip on my arm. She also released the contents of the canal in which my arm was inserted. I hit the ground and managed to roll out of the way just ahead of Bessie’s gift… or most of it, anyway.
During this entire procedure, one of the barn maintenance men had watched me intently. “Harder’n it looks, ain’t it?” he drawled.
I am having a hard time realizing that I am actually paying good money to participate in such activities.
Much love, your destitute daughter
Dear Mother,
One of the great advantages in knowing the students who preceded you in a particular class is their ability to give you a heads up on the idiosyncrasies of the class’s professor. I have found my forerunners’ information to be invaluable, although it is necessary to utilize their advice with discretion.
I am currently taking an animal nutrition class, and one piece of advice I received from my predecessors is to never say “I don’t know” in this particular professor’s class. I have heeded this advice, and made diligent attempts to prepare myself for class. On several occasions, it has been necessary for me to improvise an answer, but, as I was told, this is preferable to giving no answer at all. I guess I should have known that this tactic would not serve me sufficiently to survive the semester.
The professor gave us all projects. My project involved developing a presentation on the proper feed for cows. This included a detailed paper in which I had to delve into the nutritional needs of bovines, the bovine anatomical structures that digest food, and the physiological processes that accomplish digestion. It was quite an undertaking, but I enjoyed everything that I learned. One of the requirements was that I should have illustrations of all feeds, grains, and grasses that I presented in my paper. Given the technical detail of the paper, one would think that one of the simplest things would be to find photographs of all the feeds. Indeed, it seemed so at the beginning, but one grass eluded me. I desperately needed a photograph of a grass called Tifton 85. I searched high and low, and could find no picture. I searched the university library, the cow barn, local pastures, the Internet, and asked everyone I knew if they had a picture. The only thing I could come up with was a picture of some man kneeling on the grass and holding a Tifton 85 sprig. I grabbed up the picture and put it in my Power Point presentation.
You know how it is when you have done well on a paper or presentation… you just know you have done well. You are prepared, confident, and secure in the knowledge that you have mastered your subject. I presented my paper and Power Point presentation today, and I answered all the professor’s questions with an air bordering on aplomb. That is, until he asked, “Who is that man in the photograph with the sprig of grass?”
Was he kidding? Like I would know! What the devil does it matter who sits in a cow pasture holding a grass sprig? The old fellow must be getting senile, I decided. However, I remembered my predecessor’s admonition never to say “I don’t know”, so I thought quickly (and rather cleverly, I though) and I said, “Oh, that’s just my boyfriend.” I silently congratulated myself on my quick thinking.
The professor leaned forward, slowly pulled his glasses down to the tip of his nose and stared stonily at me. Then, he said, “Well, your boyfriend’s name is Dr. Glenn Burton. He developed the Tifton 85 grass. He’s now 89 years old and still works at the Georgia Coastal Plain Experiment Station. Be sure to give him my regards the next time you two go out.”
Love, Your financially deficient daughter
Dear Mother,
When our animal health class ended yesterday, the professor told us that we would meet today at the sheep farm. He told us all to wear work clothes and boots. I had a premonition that this was going to be an interesting day if the professor felt it necessary to instruct students on the proper attire for socializing with sheep. I was not disappointed.
At this school, there are quite a few pre-vet students who have grown up entirely in the city and whose personal experiences with animals have been limited to cats and dogs. When first presented with a rubber glove that goes to their shoulder and told to perform a rectal examination on a cow, many of these students suddenly develop passionate interests in subjects such as “Arabic for the Modern Southerner”, “Artesian Wells of the Past and Present”, and “Feminism in Mexico and Related Latino Cultures.” In short, these students’ idea of down and dirty is when the maintenance man at the zoo takes a hose to elephant poo and washes it down the drain. They abandon their rubber exam gloves and head for student services to change their major.
So, when I got to the sheep farm today and saw The Dunwoody Daughter, I gave it about 10 minutes before she abandoned ship, or sheep, and strutted her stuff over to Art History. I’m not sure I can accurately describe her attire, as most of it came from stores I have only heard about. A couple of years ago, I decided to check out some of the stores in “her” part of town, but the cops kept stopping me and asking me what I was doing. I think it was the Bond-O on the Celica’s doors that make them think I didn’t live in that area. I accused them of “financial profiling”, but they were unsympathetic and I finally gave up and left without getting any closer than ten blocks to stores I have only dreamed of.
Anyway, Miss Dunwoody Daughter showed up at the sheep farm in her work clothes. From Paris. Boots that looked like they were hand made by some poor third world woman who had chewed the leather until it was soft and pliable enough to be worthy of covering her dainty, professionally pedicured tootsies. And her fingernails! I haven’t had ten fingernails all at once since I began riding horses when I was three. Miss Dunwoody Daughter not only had ten, she had paid at least $75 for her last acrylic touch up. Her hair was frosted just enough to bring out the highlights and it hung in soft waves that cascaded across her shoulders and seemed to move in slow motion when she turned her head. It flowed and billowed just like hair in those shampoo commercials where the girl tosses her head and her hair dances strand by strand across the TV screen so you get to envy every luscious lock and become obsessed with the notion that you, too, can look just like this if you purchase a bottle of Sultry Tresses.
Miss Dunwoody Daughter climbed up on the fence and perched beside me. I was working on getting the second of three splinters out of my hand. Apparently, fate had saved the only splinter-free section of fence for my perfumed companion. The professor appeared and walked to the middle of the sheep pen. Someone over to the side opened a gate and about 50 sheep rushed into the pen. Huge wooly balls on Q-tip legs raced around baaing and bumping into each other. “Now,” the professor shouted, “each of you is going to have to catch a sheep, throw it to the ground, tag its ear, and give it an injection. Students will be given a different color ear tag, so I will be able to tell which students have properly tagged their sheep. To throw the sheep, you grab it like this…” but the bleating sheep drowned out the rest of the professor’s words. I eyed Miss Dunwoody Daughter. She turned her head slightly, tucked her chin down, and arched her perfectly waxed eyebrows. Her whole expression screamed, “You have got to be kidding!”
Lucky me, I got to go first. Actually, this really was to my benefit. Since none of the sheep had been tagged, I could work on the first one I grabbed. If half the flock had been tagged before I got my turn, I would have had to try to separate out an un-tagged sheep… and sheep don’t exactly line up and let you ask, “Ooookay. Who’s next?”
I had an advantage on some of the students, having grown up around farm animals. I knew to give the injection before I tagged the ear in order to lessen the chances of dropping the syringe and getting it dirty. I also knew it was best to put the needle in first and then connect it to the syringe. That way, if your animal does run off when you stick him, you don’t lose your medication. I loaded the tag gun and stuck it in my back pocket. I put the syringe in my left front shirt pocket and stuck the plastic capped needle between my teeth. It was relatively easy to catch an unsuspecting sheep, throw it down, pull the needle from the cap I held in my teeth, stick the sheep, grab the syringe, connect it, inject the sheep, get the gun and tag the ear, then let the sheep go, retrieve my syringe from the ground and go back to my spot on the fence post. The whole thing took about 45 seconds. I expected Miss Dunwoody Daughter to be awestruck at my expertise. Instead, she barely acknowledged my return and seemed to feel that if I could do this so quickly and effortlessly, then there really couldn’t be much to this assignment after all. I was beginning to dislike her more intensely than I though possible.
Four or five more students took their turn, with varying degrees of success. Then, the professor walked over to Miss Dunwoody Daughter and handed her a syringe and the tag gun. For the first time since we arrived, she showed surprise and consternation. I think that, up to this point, she really had though of herself simply as a spectator. The professor walked off and Miss Dunwoody Daughter climbed down. It was a different world on this side of the fence. For one thing, this side was awash in little sheep pellets. Puddles of urine made muddy spots here and there in the arena. Miss Dunwoody Daughter looked down at the ground and began to tiptoe her way carefully to the center of the arena, trying unsuccessfully to avoid the sheep droppings. The effect was to look like she was playing hopscotch. Her arms were held out at shoulder height to balance her in some of the longest leaps. When she arrived in the center of the pen, she stopped and looked around for a sheep. Naturally, the sheep had all moved away from her and they now formed an irregular ring between her and the fence. Miss Dunwoody Daughter was accustomed to being the center of attention, but not in this manner. She began to pout. I thought, “Art History, here she comes.”
But Miss Dunwoody Daughter decided to give it another try. After all, she did have to get back to the fence, so she might as well try to catch a sheep on the way. She took a step toward a sheep, this time allowing the entire ball of her foot to touch the ground. Mud began to ooze over the sides of her boots. She looked down at the boots, sighed, and planted both feet flat on the ground. She put her hands on her hips and looked around. Her pout was gone. Miss Dunwoody Daughter was getting mad. She spied a sheep that looked more cooperative than the others and began to stomp towards it. The sheep eyed her suspiciously and then bolted just as she reached hesitantly for it. Miss Dunwoody Daughter ended up about five feet in front of me, sheepless. She looked up and I saw the frustration in her eyes. I cocked my head toward the flock of sheep, which now huddled near the gate where Miss Dunwoody Daughter could exit to student services and to a less challenging and more sanitary world. “It’s doctor or debutante,” I said to her. “Take your pick.” I figured it would take her about two more seconds to be out the gate.
Miss Dunwoody Daughter just stood there staring at me. Then, she slowly began to run her hands over her clothes searching for the tag gun and syringe. She felt the gun in the waistband of her pants and pulled it out, still staring at me. She brought the gun up to her shirt pocket and still she stared at me. I gave just the slightest shake of my head and she put the gun in her back pocket. Then she moved the syringe to her shirt pocket and smiled. And before I realized it, she had taken off toward the sheep, which ran in all directions like silly little girls on a sugar high. Miss Dunwoody Daughter ran first after this one and then after that one. It took a couple of passes before she got near a tagless sheep, but when she did, she lunged for it and grabbed a handful of oily wool. The sheep put on an extra burst of speed, but Miss Dunwoody Daughter held on. Her right hand held a fistful of wool on the sheep’s back and her left hand had a grip on the sheep’s left flank. It was not exactly a hold destined to bring down a sheep, but it sure brought down a debutante. Miss Dunwoody Daughter was dragged through the mud and muck for about 15 feet before she let go. The sheep were about hysterical now and were running wildly in every direction. Miss Dunwoody Daughter got to her feet and grabbed another sheep, this time around the neck. She planted her feet in front of her and brought the sheep down, a good portion of it on top of her. I saw the syringe fly out of her hand and land in the mud several feet away. But when she let that sheep go, it sported a perfectly placed bright yellow ear tag.
Miss Dunwoody Daughter walked, limped, toward the fence. Six or seven of her acrylic fingernails were missing. Her face and hair were streaked with mud and other products foreign to her culture, her shirt pocket was torn off on one side and there was absolutely nothing left of her boots that even resembled the ones she had worn to class. She looked down at her filthy hands as though she could not believe they belonged to her and then she slowly wiped them off on her shirt. She climbed up on the fence and sat beside me. We both looked out at the yellow ear tagged sheep in the center of the flock.
“Doctor,” she stated.
“Good choice,” I said, nodding.
Love, your affluently challenged daughter
These short stories are laugh out loud funny. Even though they’re labeled short “stories” they have that thing that’s absolutely essential in any story, whether it’s fiction or non, and that’s the “ring of truth.” Not for one minute can I believe anybody who didn’t go through veterinarian school write this. Wonderful job on Miss Dunwoody Daughter, Tifton 85 and a Posterior Perspective. You’re a great storyteller.
I’ll be back.