Tuesday, October 11, 2005, 17:18
Another Rough Day
I spent the afternoon on Monday with my terminally ill neighbor. She was running a fever. Last week, she spent a few days in the hospital because she had fallen out of bed, and her husband was afraid she had broken some bones. She didn't, although the doctors thought she may have a compression fracture in her spine. Her husband thinks she picked up an influenza virus while she was in the hospital.
Great. That's just what she needs. Influenza.
The poor woman is in a lot of pain, but she is so nauseated, she cannot eat anything, so of course, she cannot keep down any pain medication. And the medication for nausea doesn't seem to do a thing for her. She spent Monday afternoon alternating between feeling freezing cold and burning up.
One of the other neighbors who also comes to stay with her called the Hospice nurse, who said, "she probably has the flu."
That's all they could offer? "She probably has the flu."
On a tiny bit of a brighter note, for whatever reason, she is able to talk a little more, and that makes it easier to know what she wants. At one point, I got a cold, wet cloth for her forehead. "It could be colder," she said.
Colder I could do. I put the cloth in the freezer for a while, and that seemed to bring her a small measure of comfort to have a really cold cloth for her forehead.
I am hoping Tuesday will be a better day.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Monday, October 10, 2005, 06:06
Come Boss!
When I went back to church Sunday morning to work at the church dinner, I wasn't expecting to chase cows along the way.
Well, all right. Not cows. A cow. One little Jersey.
After church, which was at 8 a.m., I went back home to feed the horses and to do my other chores. We live a mile and quarter from the church, and when I had finished my chores, I was going back to church to work at the dinner. And as I drove past my brother's place on the way back, I noticed a cow out in the road up ahead.
The only cows in the neighborhood are the five heifers belonging to the neighbor who lives a half mile back from where I saw the Jersey, and another neighbor who has one milk cow and lives almost a half mile ahead of where I saw the Jersey.
I figured the Jersey was the one that belonged to the neighbor who has one milk cow.
The little Jersey stood in the middle of the road, and I was worried another car might come over the hill and hit her. She was, of course, very alarmed by my truck and turned down into the ditch.
"Don't run in front of me," I muttered. "I'm going to try to get past you to tell your owners where you are."
As I drove along and inched past the Jersey, she started trotting. I gave the truck a little more gas to try to get ahead of her. She trotted faster. I gave the truck more gas. She started galloping.
"Oh, great," I said. "Now she thinks I'm chasing her."
I didn't want the Jersey to gallop all the way out to the main highway. She would most certainly get hit by a car on the main highway.
Finally, I got ahead of her, and then she realized I was not chasing her and slowed down again.
I pulled into the neighbor's driveway, went to the house and told them their cow was out. When I got back in the truck to go to church, which is just down the hill and across the road, I was curious as to where the Jersey had gone, so I shut off the truck again and got out. I started walking back down the road, and coming over the hill in front of me were my nephew and his wife. They were going to the church dinner, too, and since it was a nice day -- actually a perfect, sunny, cool October day -- they decided to walk the half mile to church from their new house on the farm where I grew up.
The Jersey, as it turned out, was between us.
When she saw there were people on both sides of her, she cut up into the pine plantation next to the road. The pines were planted this spring, and they're only a couple of inches high. My nephew saw her head into the plantation, scaled the bank and cut her off before she could go any farther. The little cow turned around, got back to the road, saw my niece-in-law on one side of her and me on the other, and decided to go back to her own place. At that point, her owners came out with a bucket of cow feed.
I figured we had her then.
I was wrong.
The Jersey high-tailed it around to one side and headed toward the back of their property -- with three of us in hot pursuit. Plan A was to get her into a round pen that the neighbors use for training their horses and then leave her there until they could figure out where she had gotten out. If they put her back in the pasture without knowing where or how she had escaped, she would just get out again.
Plan A didn't work. The Jersey galloped around the pen and headed off toward a shed.
Plan B was to get her to stop, calm down, eat some feed, and then they would lead her to the round pen.
Plan B didn't work, either.
The Jersey came up with her own Plan C.
She ran into a lane that was fenced off along the back. She couldn't go any farther.
The young man who is our neighbor's son simply drove a stake into the ground, strung up a wire -- and fenced her in where she stood. When she had calmed down, he was planning to move her back into the pasture where she belonged.
With the crisis over, I headed back to church.
Later on, I found out from my husband that he and another lady from church had chased the Jersey out of the church cemetery not long after I had gone home to do chores and had pointed her back toward home. The little dickens had made it across the highway, after all.
"Yup," Randy said. "There she was. Out in the other lot, headed south. I ran through the cemetery, leaping over headstones to cut her off."
"You ran through the cemetery?" I said.
Randy nodded. "Yes, I did. Leaping over headstones. It's mostly old farmers buried there, anyway. I figured they probably wouldn't mind."
He was right about that. Somewhere, I am quite certain, my dad was having himself a good laugh over a Jersey trotting through the cemetery and my husband leaping over headstones to cut her off before she got into the woods.
"And boy," Randy continued,"was she ever having a good time. She'd trot along for a few steps, like cows do, you know, and then she'd kick up her heels and buck. Then she'd trot along, kick up her heels and buck."
Oh, yes, the little Jersey definitely was having a very good time.
"Well, you pointed her toward home, all right," I said. "It's just that she didn't stop at home but kept right on going down the road."
It's been years since I've chased cows. And I must say -- there's nothing quite like getting a cow back where she belongs to make you feel as if maybe everything *is* all right with the world.
I've also gotta say though -- between slipping on the frost on Friday and being stiff and sore for the last few days -- the all-day craft sale I went to on Saturday to sell books -- making coleslaw for 150 Saturday evening for the church dinner -- chasing the cow -- working the church dinner today and cleaning up afterwards -- I am tired!
LeAnn R. Ralph