Dominion Over Them All

The cows.  Those big, gentle cows with the huge, sad eyes dominated our lives. It was always time to do something for or with the cows.  Milking time was twice a day, at six in the morning and six in the evening. The cows must be milked.  Then you fed the cows, cleaned the cow barn, and fed the calves that would become the future cows.  We fixed the fence in the pasture for the cows and baled hay for the cows.  Carried buckets of feed and water and fixed the drinking cups for the cows.

                The crops we planted, tilled, and harvested were for the cows.  The machinery we owned was used to care for the cows.  The land that we walked upon was purchased with the cows in mind.  The cows were the emperors, and we were their humble subjects.

                As an infant, wrapped in blankets, I was placed in a cow manger.  Too small to even roll at that time, I needed to be kept close by while Mom and Dad did chores and safe from trampling hooves.  Susie was the name of the cow assigned to be my nanny.  

Mom said, “That old cow thought you were her calf, wouldn’t go into the stall if you weren’t there.  You would lie there, and she would hang her head over you and chew her cud and wash your face occasionally.  The first time I saw it, I just shuddered.  Your soft baby skin was getting slurped by that rough old cow tongue.  But you just cooed; it didn’t bother you at all.  Sometimes I hated to pick you up; you were so full of cow slobber.”

                I remember two things that are hazy and early memories that Mom told me happened when I was three years old.  Getting Herman, the teddy bear, from the postman.  And standing beside the cattle truck holding Mom’s hand as Susie was loaded into the slaughter truck. I hate that memory ever since I realized I had likely been used to lure Susie into that truck.

                Brownie was my next nanny.  She had some mixed DNA from a random Guernsey or Jersey in her ancestry.  Otherwise, the size of a normal (gigantic) Holstein; instead of black and white, she was a brown-and-black-and-white-patterned cow.  She had crumpled horns; someone had botched a dehorning operation on her as a calf.  Brownie was old when we got her, probably ancient in dairy cow years. She had a small metal clip tag in her ear.  

                “That’s when the government agents came out and checked the cows for 'Bangs, ' and they tagged the ones that were safe,” Mom told me.

                “Bangs?” 

I imagined it was some sort of horrible cow plague that could wipe out the entire world if let loose.  Keep in mind that Mom let me watch late-night horror movies on our old black-and-white TV every Saturday night.

                “Brucellosis.  It makes cows throw their calves.  So, if heifers come from another state, they have to get this vaccine; it's on the tag, so you know the heifer has been vaccinated.”

                I was fascinated.  Brownie was a world traveler.  I wondered what she had seen.  Was she a wild cow, roaming the prairies and mountains of Montana?  Had cowboys roped her, tagged her, and sent her to our little farm in Minnesota?

                I would sit in the manger, old enough now to be there by choice, and talk to Brownie for hours.  Together, we discussed the wild west, the open prairie, and the mountains that reached the sky.  I had never seen a mountain yet, but by petting her soft muzzle, I could picture her there.

                There was a calmness to Brownie.  No matter how upset I was about my life, school, or my family, she could soothe me.  Hanging her giant bony head over my lap, she would stand patiently as I stroked her face and talked. Her warm breath dried my tears.

                Dad must have felt guilty about selling Susie because he had promised me, he would never sell Brownie. 

                “That old girl will stay here the rest of her life.”  He told me.

                I trusted Dad’s word on that.  He had said the same about our horses, Billy and Daisy, and had turned down offers for them many times.  Brownie had moved with us from the farm by Butler to the new place near Hillview.  I knew she was old, but she still led the herd, and she never got sick.  I pictured Brownie living forever. 

                Forever ended one day when I was still young.  Coming home from school on a cool autumn afternoon, I trudged up the long gravel driveway.  Exhausted from a day in school, avoiding and dodging the bullies, the torturous bus ride, I knew chores awaited me at home.  Dad was in the yard, sharpening a butcher knife on the whetstone.

                He walked across the yard to meet me, standing between me and the barnyard.  After baling the last crop of the season, Dad would take the thrower racks to the barnyard and let the dairy cows eat the loose hay that remained on the wagon.  Around him, everything looked normal, the Holsteins reaching into the rack and pulling out mouthfuls of fresh hay.  Dad hadn’t mentioned butchering lately; it was early in the year for that.

                “Old Brownie was eating on the wagon, and she couldn’t step over the hitch.  She got her foot caught up, and she fell forward.  She broke her leg, Pooch; we had to shoot her.”

                I went into the house to cry as Dad and Jim Nelson butchered Brownie.  Once the work was done, Dad sent Jim Nelson home with all the meat. 

                After the work, over coffee, Jim tried to argue with Dad about taking all the beef.

                “I just can’t eat the old girl, and Pooch will just cry every time we try,” Dad told Jim.

                After Brownie was gone, I still had adventures with the milk cows, bulls, steers, heifers, and calves. But those adventures were adversarial, brief encounters, and focused. Except, there was Little Eddie, a slightly smaller, mostly black milk cow we had purchased from Eddie Schmidt when he retired.  Like Brownie, Little Eddie had moved with us when we left Butler Township. By Mom and Dad’s figuring, Little Eddie was about three years younger than me.

                I was thirty, which would have made Little Eddie twenty-seven when Dad called me one day to help with a downed cow.  I was home from university for the summer, stepping back into the role of overall farm worker.  At Dad’s bellow, I reflexively jumped up, put on my glasses, and threw on clothes.  The NASCAR pit crew had nothing on us kids getting dressed and presenting for work when Dad bellowed.

                “Pooch!  A cow’s down in the meadow.  Come help!”

                Dressed in record time, awake and moving in an instant, I ran down the stairs and into the kitchen.  Dad stood there, rope in his hands.

                “It’s Little Eddie,” he said.

                I started to feel the burn of unshed tears.  “Oh, please no,” I whispered under my breath as I tramped out to the meadow in Dad’s wake.  Dad would march with purpose and determination when he was upset, silently moving ahead of me one long stride at a time.

                There, halfway down a small slope, lay Little Eddie.  She perked up her ears and reached her head out as we approached. “Moo,” She called out to us as she lay alone on the grass.  The other cows were in the barn, already being milked by Mom.  

                Little Eddie’s moo sounded apologetic.  She was late for milking and, most importantly, for grain.

                “Oh, dear.  I seem to have got myself in a bit of a bother here,” Little Eddie seemed to say to us as we walked closer.

                I had never talked to Little Eddie, nor had I ever given her more than a random pet, just like the other dairy cows. I knew which cow I was, but to her, Dad and I were obviously her saviors.  Surely, the humans who bring all things good to eat in buckets could assist her to make it to the barn in time for grain.

                Scratching her between her ears, in that warm dip in her skull, I looked at the situation.  At my touch, Little Eddie stretched her neck out and attempted to get her front legs folded beneath her.  Once her front legs were properly folded, she could use them to lever herself into a standing position.   She tried and failed, collapsing down with a sigh as her hind legs refused to move into position. 

                Dad and I moved her legs to the correct position, but even with assistance, her body wouldn’t cooperate. 

                “Call the vet, Pooch,” Dad instructed me.

                Dad never called the vet on a downed cow; a downed cow would never get back up.  He refused to eat meat from any animal that was sick, but would call a neighbor to shoot it, and if they wanted, have the meat. Little Eddie was ancient in cow years; most dairy cows are sent to slaughter by the age of six or eight. The fact that Dad was willing to spend money on a veterinarian for an ancient dairy cow told me all that I needed to know.

                What I hadn’t realized before was that Little Eddie, for Dad and for me, was a part of our family’s living history.  A time when both Dad and Eddie Schmidt were younger and healthier, with a lifetime ahead of them.  Now, Eddie was in a nursing home, and the years had slowly shrunk and crippled Dad. I was already grieving the loss, as though if Little Eddie left, it would be the last connection to my childhood.

                The vet did a farm call and gave us the sad news.  As we stood on the side of the hill, Dad, the vet, and I, the vet told us the prognosis.

                “You know she’s an old cow.  They don’t usually live this long.  But her spine is just worn out.  And as that calf she is carrying grows bigger, it’s going to get worse.  I can help get her up now, but she’s not gonna stay up for long.”

                After an injection, most likely a steroid, the vet helped us calculate the physics of getting the cow to her feet.  Thank goodness she was smaller than average, making the chore somewhat easier.  Finally, after much directing and pulling and prodding, Little Eddie stood on unsteady feet.  Her legs were shaky as she walked away from us, then eventually broke into an ungainly trot.

                “Moo,” She called, announcing to the other cows: “Don’t eat all the ground feed, I’m coming!”

                Dad put Little Eddie in the small corral next to the barn.  Alone there, with a shed, automatic waterer, and both hay and grain, she could live a life of leisure.  No one would accidentally knock her over, she didn’t have to walk out to graze, and her humans could keep an eye on her status.  Three days later, Dad bellowed again at the early dawn.

                “Pooch!  Little Eddie’s down again.”

                This time, I moved more slowly.  I knew what this meant.  This was what the vet had predicted.  Little Eddie’s body, worn from years of producing milk, calving, and walking through pastures, was having the last word.

                As we stepped into the corral, Little Eddie lifted her head up and mooed in our direction.

                “Silly me, I seem to have done it again.  Oopsy.  Well, here you are to help me again. You don’t happen to have some extra grain on you, do you?”

                Standing beside her long cow face and scratching the top of her head, I met Dad’s eyes.  His face was set with grim determination.  I knew what he was trying to say, as he struggled to get the words out. I stood there in front of this bent, gray-haired man wearing baggy overalls.

                “The vet said this was gonna happen.  Especially as the calf gets bigger inside of her.  We can get her up this time, but it's gonna happen again.”  I told Dad, sparing him the identical speech he was about to give me.

                Dad agreed with me and walked to the barn to tell Mom.  Feeling like a traitor, I gave Little Eddie her anticipated meal of ground feed and one final head scratch.  Stepping into the barn, I heard Dad talking to Mom.

                “Call that guy with the tigers in Wadena,” Dad told Mom, “He might as well feed them if he will come out and get her.”

                The man with the personal home zoo came out within an hour. He drove his truck into the yard, and Dad and I walked him to the corral.  I stood next to Little Eddie, tears streaming, and the two men discussed the logistics.

                “Since she can’t get up, there’s no way I can load her, but I can winch her in,” The man said as he reached for the gun on his hip.

                “Wait!” Dad commanded angrily, “You don’t touch her until the baby is in the house.”

                Then, turning to me, Dad said, “You go on into the house now.

                I bent down and took Little Eddie's giant head into my arms.  Whispering in her ears, I said, “It's okay, you’re not gonna hurt anymore.  You’re going to be free now.”

                Then I walked to the house and turned on the TV as loudly as I could so that I would not hear the shot that took away a last line tying me to my past.

                I cried over three milk cows in my lifetime.  Raised on a farm, I had to harden my heart and be nonchalant about the business aspect of farming.  To be honest, indifference and anger were easier emotions to maintain with cows. 

Dairy cattle are large and outweigh their human owners.  With brute force and determination, they can win any fight with a fair advantage.  Humans have the speed and intelligence to avoid certain death or at least maiming.  As a large human with slow wits and even slower rates of speed, I had my fair share of mauling. 

It takes nerves of steel to stand in front of a gate or hole in a fence while cattle stampede towards you.  I didn’t have nerves of steel, but I did have a healthy fear of my father’s temper.  The problem with “stand over there and block that hole” is that no matter how large I was, I could never completely cover the hole.  I would stop one cow, while a dozen others ran past me and through to freedom. 

“Goddamn it!  Are you blind or just stupid?  You can’t even stand there and do nothing.”  Dad screamed at me. 

Tubby must have snickered because Dad pivoted on him in rage.  “You!  Throw a rock and hit that damn dog on the head. She’s scaring the cows and making them crazy.”

Dad was pointing at a Husky, who, completely oblivious to the unfolding action, was standing in front of the gate, easily a mile away. The distance made the large dog look microscopic.

“I don’t think I can hit her head from here,” Tubby said solemnly.

Mom started laughing, gasping, “Hit the head.  Not good enough to scare the dog or just hit the dog with the rock.  You gotta hit it on the head!” 

The dog had never been in any danger, and we all knew it.  No matter how angry he was at the time, Dad would never have allowed anyone to throw a rock at it.  Mom’s laughter at the specifics of Dad’s demands made him pause and put on a sheepish grin.

“Well, youse gotta go and get them now.” He announced and crossed his arms to wait for the cattle to be herded back.

Besides a full-body stomping from a stampede, cows can mangle the human body in various ways.  One of the most painful is the stomp on the top of your foot.  Cows won’t lift their hoof off your foot; instead, in a bitter and resentful move, the cow will twist their hoof further into your delicate foot.   Once twisted in another direction, the cow will bear all their weight on that one hoof and slowly slide it off the top of your foot.  During this process, the human (me) is flailing, yelling, and pounding on an indifferent beef wall. 

One evening, in his eagerness to get to the cow, the Hereford bull followed the dairy cows into the barn.  Dad was in the field cutting hay at the time, so I had only tiny Mom to assist me in wrangling a full-grown Hereford bull. 

As he neared retirement from farming, Dad was playing genetic roulette with the cows and bulls.  This time, he chose a stubborn Hereford whose head from eyeball to eyeball spanned the length of my entire arm.  Rippled in muscles and in the mood for “l’amour”, he swept me aside with one toss of his head. Mom was standing near the milkhouse door, out of range and ready to cut and run.

“Get him, Pooch, get him out of the barn,” Mom screamed at me, waving her arms.  She was useless in this fight.  It was me against the Andre the Giant of Herefords, and he was driven mad by lust.

I moved closer to try to get the bull’s attention.  He responded by stomping down hard on my right foot.  I was a mere bothersome gnat to him, and he stomped me into uselessness.  Held fast by his one hoof, I flailed and pounded on his muscled back.  His response was to shake his head slightly, as though I were a pesky mosquito buzzing in his ears.  To him, I probably sounded like a mosquito as well, buzzing in his ear endlessly.

“Get off me!  No!  Get out, damn it, get out!  Get off my foot, move!  Ouch!  Get off me!”

The bull slowly slid his hoof, as he twisted and pivoted his ton of weight on me. The pain was excruciating as the hoof slid across all five of my toes.  His weight ripped my cheap canvas tennis shoes.  His weight or the responding swelling of my injured foot? I will never know which, but the fact that my five-dollar chore shoes were ruined made me even angrier.  Finally, my foot was freed.  I limped and ran outside the back door of the barn, threw my ruined shoe, and plunged my bare foot into the water tank. I sat on the edge of the tank, watching my foot swell and turn deep purple.

In a short time, the bull, his lust satisfied, ambled out of the back door of the barn.  Without a glance at me, he walked off to join the cattle gathered near a hay bale. Mom finally came to the back barn door and looked at me as I sat on the water tank. Mom appeared triumphant, framed in the barn door; she had singlehandedly chased the bull out.  The fact that the bull was done with his business and left on his own to eat hay, the equivalent of a bovine cigarette, did not diminish her victory.

“You okay?”

“No,” I yelled back through gritted teeth.  “And I get that calf!”

Dad came home a few hours later and checked my injuries as I lay on the couch.  Elevated by pillows, my foot was wrapped in bread bags filled with ice.  Lifting the ice bag like the trained medical professional he was not; Dad gasped at my foot. 

My toes and feet were swollen to three times their normal size.  A deep plum purple color covered both the top and bottom of my foot.  My toes were an angry red, as the purple threatened to move to them as well. My toes were swollen so severely that they appeared round and ready to burst.  The hoof twisting had somehow twisted my toes as well into an odd position.  The throbbing was unbearable as I desperately waited for the Tylenol to do something, anything for the pain.

“Oh, that looks bad, Pooch.  You'd better go to the doctor.  I think he broke it.  Big bastard, isn’t he?”  Dad chuckled, oddly proud of the size of the Hereford bull and the damage he could inflict.

It was milking time, so I drove myself to the emergency room in Wadena. I had to use my left foot for the gas and the brake.  I limped into the emergency room with one shoe on my left foot, and nothing on the purple watermelon of my right foot.

It’s a small emergency department in a small town, so thankfully, I was seen immediately.  I was laid down on the exam table by a nurse, with a flat pillow to elevate my injured foot.

“Hm,hm, hm,” The doctor muttered as he looked at my foot.  He tsked as he gently rolled my now dark purple toes.

“Well,” he said. “We’re gonna take you down to X-ray and see what’s going on in there, then when they bring you back, we will put a cast on it.”

On one leg, I hopped from the table to the wheelchair that the nurse brought into the room.  Off I went to the X-ray.  As the nurse pushed me to the X-ray department of the hospital, I pondered what life with a cast would look like for me.  It occurred to me that, finally, Mom and Dad would have to admit I had been seriously injured.  This was not one of those injuries that they could tell me, “Walk it off,” or “it's not that bad, the way you’re carrying on, you could have lost the whole damn leg.”

There was a sweet smugness nestled inside my chest as the X-ray tech painfully manipulated my foot on the table.  I would have a cast, a badge of how hard I worked and how I put myself in danger daily. Bonus: I wouldn’t be able to help with chores or throw hay bales; I had the perfect excuse. Holding the envelope of X-ray films and being pushed back to the emergency room, I was already picturing a few weeks of couch time, filled with books and afternoon soap operas.

The doctor snapped the films onto the light box.

“Huh,” he said.  “Look at that.”

After carefully examining the X-rays of my foot, he rolled over on his examination chair.  Leaning forward, he sighed.

I sat there in anticipation.  I was waiting for casting, crutches, bed rest, and no chores to come out of his mouth.

“I don’t believe it,” he said.  “You didn’t break any bones at all.  Every single bone is fine.  I think what happened is that the hoof spread the bones apart in your foot, so that no one bone had to bear the weight.  The bull flattened everything, and the bones rolled out of the way!  Unbelievable.  I was sure it was broken.  It sure looks like its broke.  The good news is, no cast, no crutches, just ice and keep it elevated until the swelling goes down.  Who would have thought?  You are sure one lucky lady.”

Walking out of the emergency department with a handful of Motrin samples, I didn’t feel lucky.  I had all the pain and none of the benefit. Now I had an emergency department bill to pay, and I needed new chore shoes. I wanted to go back to the doctor and demand a cast and crutches.  Damn it!  I needed confirmation that I had a real injury!

It took weeks for my foot to return to normal.  When they saw me limping, the neighbors would ask Dad, “What happened to her?”

“Oh, a cow stepped on her and she ain’t stopped bitching since then.”  Dad would casually inform the inquisitive neighbor.  

Another injury that can occur around cows is an upper-body or head injury from kicking. One would assume that standing behind a cow was the most dangerous, that a cow could kick backward at random and cause injury.  I laugh at the backward kick; only the most inexperienced farmworker would get injured from that type of kick. I would have been able to walk off that kind of a kick.

We used Surge milking buckets.  A belt with a metal portion to hold the milking bucket as it filled would be put around the center of the cow's back.  The metal part had to be directly beneath the cow; the bucket had a metal piece protruding from the top to hang it on the belt.  Tossing the belt on the cow’s back, you must reach your arm under the cow’s wide abdomen and grab the hanging metal piece.  The metal piece had a hook on the end that fit into holes on the leather strap like a belt buckle.

Putting the belt on the cow sounds more dangerous than it really is; most cows don’t react.  An inexperienced or nervous cow might stomp her back feet a few times or sway side to side.  But even though the upper half of your body is under the cow between the front and back hooves, kicking isn’t usually involved. Maybe one or two back hoof raises as a warning; it was a safe part of the procedure.

Once the belt was in place, the bucket would be hung at the center of the belt's metal section.  There was a U-shaped part of the metal that held the bucket in place as it filled. Once again, a relatively safe process.  But before hooking up the vacuum hose and the milking system, the whole area had to be cleaned and sanitized.

This sanitation ritual was where the trouble could begin. The cow’s reaction to her “spigots,” being washed with warm, soapy water, then dipped in an iodine mixture, predicted what would happen next.  A slight jump with both back feet and a head turn to watch meant the cow was a bit anxious.  Soft words and a stroke on her side were required to calm her down.  What you learned to watch for was the right back leg.

If, during the washing, the right back hoof was lifted or made any movement, you had crossed into the danger zone.  The game was on.  Someone was not walking out of that stall without risking life and limb.  That someone is the person milking the cow.

Milking is hot work; a barn filled with dairy cow bodies produces heat.  Carrying milk buckets to the milkhouse and lifting them up to fill the bulk tank is physically exhausting.  Crouching and standing, bending, reaching, lifting; steady movement for two hours.  The working environment is unpleasant, and the task seems endless.

The person milking is tired and cranky. After a long day of work, there is one more chore to complete.  It is understandable then that the person milking is not vigilant. A signal of aggression, a foot stomp, or a tail twitch can be overlooked.  Sometimes the name of the cow may be a warning, “Ol’ kicker” being one of the most common.  But too often the violence catches the laborer unaware. 

Cows have eyes on the side of their face.  They can watch what you are doing without suspicion.  You have been throwing around ninety-pound hay bales all day in the hot summer sun; meanwhile, the cow has been leisurely grazing and planning the great uprising.

It is when you squat down to put the milker cups on the teat that you are at your most vulnerable.  Your balance is off as your knees and thighs scream in pain from further infliction of effort.  Your eyes are focused on the udder; your entire left side is an open target. Forehead pressed into a thousand pounds of breathing hamburger; you reach blindly underneath the cow’s stomach.

Precisely at this moment, as you are crouched like a baseball catcher, sweating into your eyes, hands reaching out to throw you off balance, you become the victim.

Wham!  A hoof comes flying up faster than you would think a lumbering bovine could move.  If you are lucky, and you will feel blessed if you are, the cow has not been soaking their hoof in the urine and manure of the gutter.

A rock-hard cloven hoof connects with your shoulder and topples you over like a domino.  Go limp, don’t be a hero, take the fall.  Because the hoof must come back to its original position.  If you withstand the first blow, the return will get the right side of your face with a slightly weaker force, but enough to peel the skin off your face and skull.

It is a little-known bit of trivia, kept secret by dairy farmers, that milk cows have hips capable of 360-degree movement. Without dropping her cud, some cows can do a roundhouse fan kick, wiping you out on the first hit and then swiveling back to smash your stunned body. 

The speed kicker swings her hoof like a hyper-attack pendulum.  She kicks repeatedly in rapid succession as you try to dodge the hooves and crawl on your hands and knees out of range.  The only safe spot may be under the body of the cow next to you, unless she, too, is part of the diabolical plan.  Without turning her head, the speed kicker continues stomping blindly until you, the milk bucket, the belt, and your dignity are out of range.   As you emerge, reborn out of the gutter of cow waste, you realize you must go back and face the frenzied attack.  The cows must be milked.

The rodeo cow combines the roundhouse kick, the swiftness of a speed attack, and throwing her body around the stall. Her head held in place by the stanchion, she will buck, swivel, sway from side to side, and kick with her back feet in alternating motion. The rodeo cow can cause the most chaos as her wild movements will throw her into her stall partner, enticing the other cow to join in on the frenzy. 

It is the rodeo cow that most often gets a flying hoof caught in the belt.  At that point, either the leather belt is ripped apart, or the cow will land a half ton of body weight on the milker bucket.  The action is intense as you pray, swear, and yell while dodging kicks and watching disaster unfold.  The rodeo movement is generally reserved for young cows; it requires the speed and insolence of youth.

On a family farm, you can count on your beloved family members to be nearby as you face danger.  After all, they are tired too and can always use a good laugh.

“Oo wee Pooch!  That’s a wild one there.  Better watch out, she’s gonna kick the shit out of you.”

“You look like you've been shot at and missed, shit at and hit!”

“She did the same thing to me last night; she’s pretty jumpy.  Don’t let her get away with it.”

Tell me now, how was I going to avoid letting the cow get away with it?  I was covered in cow shit and bruises; it was apparent the cow had already “got away with it” and was victorious.

We had a “kicker,” a heavy metal vice that fit over a cow's hips, preventing her from lifting her legs.  Dad bought it at an auction with a pile of iron junk.  The assorted stanchions, drinking cups, and a “cow kicker” device had been dumped off the pickup next to the barn.  

Unloading the truck after returning from a spring auction sale, Dad tossed the device onto the pile without a thought.

“Those damn things don’t work,” Dad told me as I helped him toss the possible spare parts of cow equipment into piles.

“What do they do?”

“You put it on the cow in front of their hips and tighten it up so they can’t kick.  It just scares the cow and makes it crazier.  It’s gotta hurt them, because once you use it, you gotta use it every time or they will beat the shit out of you, Pooch.”

It was winter when I remembered the cow kicker device.  I was helping Mom milk cows in the evening, a cold and dark Minnesota evening.  I had gone into the stall next to a rodeo cow and crawled out defeated more than a few times.  At least Dad wasn’t home to help by adding laughter to my humiliation.  Not that Mom was any help; she was the one who insisted I had to milk that cow.

“I’m gonna try the cow kicker,” I told Mom, shakily getting to my feet.

“I don’t know if we got one; your dad always says they don’t work for shit anyway and just hurt the cow.”

“We got one, Dad threw it over by the old stanchions.  And at this point, I don’t care if it hurts that damn cow.  She’s gonna kill me.”

In January in Minnesota, the snow drifts beside the barn had frozen into a hard crust.  Somewhere under there was the tool I needed to survive milking that cow. The west side of the barn was blocked from the yard light, so Mom held the flashlight as I dug with my hands in the snow.  Relying on memory, I dug like a dog with my hands to clear the snow from a pile of iron scraps.

“Found it!”

“Can you get it out, though?  Looks frozen to the ground.”

Covered in ice and snow, the vice lay there tempting me in the dark night.  I kicked it repeatedly until it began to move, adding a bruise to the side of my foot to match the one on the side of my forehead.

Triumphantly, I pulled out the metal vice.  This was a magical device, simplistic in design yet a lifesaver in its modest form.   The cow wouldn’t be able to lift a foot, much less kick me.  The cow had to be milked.  If I needed medieval torture technology, so be it.

I carried the vice into the barn and straight to the stall of my abuser.  Mom, as always, stood a good distance behind me, in case she needed to run hysterically away from my bleeding body. I placed the cold metal vice in front of the cow’s hips.  The cow stood still, watching from an evil side eye, storing up her energy.  Deliberately, I tightened the screw on the vice of my revenge.

“MOOOO, the cow screamed, her tongue sticking straight out of her mouth.

It might have been the frozen metal as it was tightened onto her body, or the heaviness of the vice, or the pinching of her side.  I didn’t have time to contemplate what created such a panicked reaction in the Holstein from hell.

The cow jumped forward; more accurately, she leaped. With a full weight of at least a thousand pounds, possibly more, she threw herself into the manger.  The chains holding the stanchion in place snapped, front and top, at the stanchion's attachment to the manger. The vice may have kept the cow from kicking, but not leaping forward to go through the manger, bucking, jumping, and diving into the stalls between other cows.

I watched, amazed, as the vice stayed in place, while the bucking cow bent drinking cups and screamed in terror.

“Shit!” I said, watching the horror show in front of me.

“She broke the stanchion,” Mom informed me, needlessly.

As the cow shoved her head between wooden posts and metal stalls, the stanchion finally fell off her neck, broken into uselessness. When the stanchion fell at her feet, the cow stopped and stared at it curiously. “Where did that come from?” She seemed to wonder, looking down at the destruction.

“Now what?” I asked Mom.

“We gotta go get another stanchion; there’s no fixing that one.”

The rodeo cow was now calmly eating up wisps of hay in the manger in front of the other cows.  The other cows started to calm down, exhausted from being terrorized by a mad sister encased in iron running zigzag through the stalls.

“We got another stanchion?” I asked.

“If we do, it’s out in that snowdrift where you found the cow kicker.”

“Shit.”

Again, we trudged out to the west side of the barn, covered in darkness and crisp, driven snow drifts.

“Please let there be a stanchion that works out here.” I prayed aloud.  I was useless in this search.  I had remembered the possible spot the cow kicker had been tossed, because I had commented on it.  I had no idea which area the stanchions and stanchion parts had been tossed.

We had a dim flashlight and our hands and feet.  We didn’t have a shovel, and we were about to freeze our asses off.  But the cows must be milked.  I bent over and began digging into the snow drifts.

Holding the flashlight, Mom swept snow away with her left hand.  We found drinking cups, drinking cup pipes, and odd pieces of pipe connectors and corner pieces.

“Wrong side of the pile,” I told Mom in defeat.

“I think I found something over here.” Mom announced as she pointed the flashlight at the ground. There, frozen to the ground, were half a dozen metal and wood stanchions with chains attached at the top and bottom.

“They don’t look like much,” Mom told me as she kicked at the stanchions to loosen them from the ground.  “I hope there’s one here that still works.”

We found a complete stanchion that might still function.  By this time, we were shivering in the cold wind and laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation.

“Don’t tell your father.  And throw that damn kicker away.”

The crazy cow was calm by the time we had installed the new stanchion.  I walked up to her as she stood in the middle of the barn, a confused expression on her bovine face.  The cow seemed to have forgiven or forgotten my crimes against her and was puzzled to have found herself standing alone behind all the other cows.  I easily reached up and loosened the vice. The grateful cow watched me release the vice, and once freed, she walked slowly into her stall and put her head in the stanchion.

My would-be assassin stood calmly, chewing her cud and burping as I closed the stanchion and left the stall to get the belt and milker.  It was with great trepidation that I re-entered the stall.  She was insane in her determination to kill me before I put on the vice; surely now, she would be even more determined to stomp me into the cement.

What I had not counted on was that after the cow's frenzied actions to avoid the vice, she now viewed me as her rescuer.  She stood calmly, like any docile milk cow, as I put on the belt and set up the milker.

Mom found the cow’s reaction even more hilarious and spent the rest of the evening giggling. We kept our vow and never told Dad what had happened that night.  He never noticed or questioned the holes in the snowdrifts, which were blatantly visible in daylight.  Or the one stanchion that was different from the others.

Dad never blinked when Mom began referring to that cow as Lester, after Dad’s brother, who was well known to have a temper.     

When I was a little girl, full of curiosity and wanting an explanation for everything, I went to Mom.  Mom had an answer ready for me every time I asked.  As I would later with Lilly, she defaulted to God as the final determinant of all things when I stumped her with a question.

Mom used God to explain the questions, but sometimes she just threw out a bible lesson apropos of nothing.  We would usually be in the kitchen, making bread for the week on a cold winter day.  Mom would be making bread, and I would be mangling and smashing my own “loaf” to “help”. 

There was one story that was repeated often and remains clearly in my mind.  It was the story of creation.  She rarely covered the Garden of Eden. Mom didn’t spend much time on Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit.  I have always suspected she sided with Eve; if Adam was stupid enough to partake of the forbidden fruit, that's bad on him.

No, Mom would tell me repeatedly, the same few lines as she understood them from Genesis.

“God made all the fish in the sea, all the birds in the sky, and all the animals that walk on earth under the heavens.  And he gave humans dominion over them all.  That means we are responsible for them; it's our job to take care of them.”

Maybe it was Mom’s favorite part, or she was preparing me for a life as a farmwife.  Regardless, that lesson was the one constantly impressed on me. Now I have a vegetarian daughter, who flinches at the idea of the cruelties of farming. 

Lilly refused to watch Disney movies as a child.  I have the entire Disney VHS movie collection, unwatched and dusty in storage. 

“You wanna watch a movie with me?”

“No!  It’s gonna be sad!  It’s gonna make me cry!”  Lilly would shout every time she recognized the Disney logo on the VHS cassette in my hand. 

Wow.  I never knew that Disney movies were emotional abuse.  I showed her one movie, The Jungle Book.  I put in the movie and went off to do laundry and clean the house. I came back to find my young child sobbing on the couch.

“What’s wrong?”

“You said it wasn’t a sad movie.  You said I would like it!  You said it was funny.  But it’s not, it's saaaad!”  She threw herself across the sofa dramatically.

“But what about, look for the bare necessities? Isn’t that fun?  And the snake and the tiger? That’s my favorite part!”

Muffled by the sofa pillow, Lilly cried, “But first, he was left alone by the human family, and then the animals took him in and gave him a family, and then they had to give him baaack!  And they were his family!  Now all the animals are sad and lonely!”

I realized that, out of the entire movie that I had loved so much on Sunday night TV, it had been boiled down to one meaning.  The animals had their feelings hurt and were sad.

I had never told Lilly my mom’s abbreviated version of Genesis that she had determinedly taught me.  But she had somehow absorbed the meaning.  Humans are responsible for the animals.

Now Lilly teaches me about Mitzvahs, or Jewish Commandments, and that there are specific commandments related to animals: Never cause unnecessary pain, feed the animals before you eat, and alleviate suffering.  This, she tells me, is a requirement to mirror God’s compassion for all creatures.  “Tsar baalei Chayim” is the prohibition of unnecessary suffering of animals caused by humans.  Lilly has not offered any commandments prohibiting the abuse of humans by animals.

“It must have been so hard for you to see the cows be sold or butchered,” Lilly tells me often. 

“It depends,” I tell her.  “It depends.”