Cowboys

One of the adjustments that I had to make coming to North Dakota was the change from "ranchers" to "farmers". Essentially what I mean by this is I grew up in ranching country in Northern Montana where people work cattle while riding horses and they rope the cows from the back of the horse. In contrast, the farmers of North Dakota ride four wheelers, coil a rope like it is an electrical extension cord, and have the vet come out to dart cows. In general, they don't ride and they definitely don't rope.

With that in mind I set out on an unexpected adventure one day this past summer to fix a rectal vaginal prolapse in a cow. I was told that this father and his two sons were actually pretty good cowboys so everything should go smoothly. When I arrived farmer son 1 was waiting and said help would be arriving in a couple minutes. In the meantime he filled me in on the situation and the plan. He said the cow was very tame and that we would just throw a loop over her head, tie her to the truck, and fix the prolapse. Naively I said okay, the other helpers arrived and they were off to bring the cows from back over the hill.

True to their word, the old Hereford cow was mild tempered and farmer son 2 easily tossed a loop over her head. Somewhere between the putting a loop over her head and getter her tied to the truck the plan went rapidly sour. Just as the rope was being dallied around some part of the truck the cow decided she wasn't pleased and took off. With son one running/dragging behind her on the rope, son 2 on the four wheeler, and farmer dad in the pickup the quartet went galloping, dragging, and bouncing out of sight over the hill.

By the time I caught up in my truck things were looking up a bit. The cow was now dallied to the over-sized grill guard and efforts were being made to bring her closer to the truck. Unfortunately, the temperament of this cow had been misjudged and we were now dealing with one very angry cow. Attempts to move her closer with the four wheeler were unsuccessful. So son 1 and 2 took turns trying to get the cow closer on foot...also unsuccessful to the point that the cow was chasing them in circles, first one direction, then the other, around the truck; punctuated by occasional escapes jumping into the truck bed.
Whether by luck or accident someone got another rope around her back feet and tied it to the hitch on the bumper. This was just in time because the rope on the front had begun to fray and she was probably two trips back and forth short of a broken rope and freedom. Unfortunately, though she was tied to both the front and back of the pickup, she could still move about 10 feet and was intent on filling her hunting tag for man. Finally, a bright idea dawned on me. I still had my ace in the hole and it sure didn't look like we were going to win cowboy style. Like a true hunter I got out my dart gun and shot her from about 15 feet away and she went down like a champ wouldn't.

The prolapse had been out for several days, was dry, and hard and was not going back in easily. With a fair amount of cutting and pushing both rectal and vaginal prolapses were reduced and ready to sew up. Unfortunately the adventure wasn't fully complete. Sometimes we tend to do stupid things for no good reason and this was one of those days for me. Instead of using my needle holders to pull the needle with umbilical tape through the skin on the third horizontal mattress suture, I pulled with my hand. Sure enough my wet fingers slipped off the tip of the needle while holding tight and gashed a nice inch and a half long incision in my thumbprint. It was bleeding profusely, but so was the cow, so my attempt to bandage it quickly came off and I just sewed here up the rest of the way without the use of my thumb, all the time assuming that all the blood I was seeing was bovine.

Eventually I did get everything in its proper place, the cow untied and reversed, and my thumb bandaged nicely. Except for the lasting cut on my hand I didn't give much thought to the experience until a few days later when farmer son 1 was in the clinic to pick some things up and I asked how our patient was doing.

"Oh, yeah...she died"

"Really," I replied, somewhat deflated.

"Oh, no, she was doing fine after you worked on her...she just got hit by lightning".