Monday, July 6, 2009

We made a Cow!!

In preparation for the other 1/2 of me to arrive on Monday, I decided that i would spend my 4th of July weekend studying like mad in the frigid study halls of lovely AUC while the rest of the world (American world that is I suppose) soaked up a little sun and combined hydrogen and oxygen.

To talk myself into a marathon weekend full of genetic translocations, stratum corneum and superior mesenteric artery branches (fun huh) I used up my once a week lab free afternoon on Thursday to do a little decompressing at one of our favorite spots on the island: Happy Bay.

Everything was normal and routine about the beach outing, got to do a little reading, a lot of snorkeling and some fantastic relaxation. Now if you remember the hike to Happy Bay is about a 20 minute walk over a subtle mountain path and through a grassy pasture. The pasture is the key feature to this story, pastures have cows, and on the walk back from the beach we found that this pasture had a pregnant cow lying just off the path, lying on her side in awful distress attempting to give birth to what seemed at the time a small pachyderm.

"Ooooh," Leah said, "she's having a baby let's watch."

You may insert your own version of how the look of disgust appeared on my face at this moment. It was eleven hundred degrees, I had just swam about 3000 yards, the cow was lying beside at least 7 closely packed thorn trees in waist high saw briars, and we were out of drinking water. Yippee, Yes! lets get closer and watch the miracle of life, right here right now.

So we climbed up on the makeshift fence made of the native rock and waited for this miracle of life to come before us....and waited.....and waited....and waited.......

It just wasn't happening! 20 minutes and the poor cow was no closer to expelling the newborn into the world.

"You know if you just grab that little hoof and give it a pull, it will just come on out"

Now take that initial look of disgust and square it or cube it, whichever you please!

"I will be happy to go and find the guy we saw tending to the fence earlier, and alert him of the bovine in distress up on the hill"

And just to let you know we walked the enire 20 minute hike back to the parking area to go and find him. But at least half way down the trail I heard..

"If we don't find him, we are going back and helping that cow"

Look of disgust number 3, but this time take a log function or some wild exponential expansion of it, get your calculator if you need to.

Of course, the cowherder was no were to be found. So back we go, up and over the mountain once again, only to find the cow was no further along on her journey to motherhood. She had, however, managed to roll herself onto her knees and tangle all 4 of them in a barbed netwire fence. Standing there contemplating leaping backwards off the cliff face, 2 other couples walked up and thwarted my suicidal machinations.

"Here, use your beach towel and just grab the hoof and pull it out"

Look of disgust number 4!

One of the guys that walked up felt my pain, "Man I'm so sorry for you!"

Look of pity number 1!

So here we go, miles from clean water, sporting flip flops and no shirt, Dengue fever spreading mosquitoes flying about, swine flu carrying pedestrians standing on the sidelines watching and waiting and a molecular cell biology review session starting in 45 minutes. (Gonna miss that one) Hot Damm! Let's birth us a cow..

I am so glad that I am not a vet or a cow farmer! There is nothing like grabbing a wet slimy cow appendage with a beautiful beach towel and tugging on in time with the contraction only to have it pulled right back in upon relaxation, many times I thought I would be lost on these retro directed uterine relaxations, sucked up into the void.

More and more people began gathering on the sidelines, gawking, staring, cheering us on, coaching the cow, Le mans breathing with her "Hwooooooo Hwwwooooooo Heeeeeeeee," they would say in unison. It took all of my inner strength not to huck a rock in their general direction.

After a bit of working and tugging and getting consumed by the mosquitoes and scarred for life by the thorn trees and saw briars, we were able to determine that the poor calf was coming out out neck first, with its head pressed against its left flank, and that it had not moved a single time. We knew that this was all just to help the cow get this out and live another day.

33 clocked minutes had passed and the last part of the calf was finally pulled free by us 2 weary, slimy, souls. An uproar went up from the sidelines.

"I can't believe ya'll just did that"

Now to just untangle the 7,000 ton cow from the barbed wire...oh yeah i almost forgot...to make it better this all occurred on the side of that nice mountain that we have to climb to get to Happy Bay. And since the odds were going in my favor so nicely that day, Fortuna decided to have the fence on the downside of that mountain with the entangled cow using every bit of Newton's gravity to her advantage to make her dislodgement that much more difficult.

Zero help from the cow, zero help from the still gathering crowd, cow weighs a billion pounds, can't get that last knee out of place...please oh please let an earthquake happen right now and slough off the entire side of this mountain into the briny sea!

Finally, the tiniest shift of weight from the cow and she was free..and another uproar from the crowd.

After it was all done we were nasty, grimy, slimy, smelly, sweaty and very glad we had done it. Whoever the owner of the cow is got to keep at least one of his herd alive instead of loosing 2 at once, we felt great about saving at least that one life and we (along with the sideline lookers) got one hell of a story to tell.



just gotta love life on the 18th parallel