Twins on the Hilltop

The First Set of Twins - "Hey Bud."

The First Twins Having Breakfast

One of my cows, a rangy Santa Gertrud's cow, has been so kind as to bless me with two different sets of twins.  The first set had no white on them at all.  One was solid red, the other solid black.  She had no problem raising two big strapping calves, almost always nursing them both at once.

One fine late afternoon last fall, Sharon called to me from the patio.  "I can see a red baby calf out in the back field, but I don't see any cow."

Cows and calves sometimes drift apart, and I was;t too worried.  But decided discretion was the better part, and got on the quad to look into this mystery.  I assumed I'd ride out there, find the old cow standing just out of sight, and all would be well.

And it was, sorta.  I did get out where the baby was standing, looked off to my left, and sure enough, there was the old cow.  No problem.  I'll simply get behind this calf and urge her over toward her Momma, she'll see the cow and I can go home to dinner.

The calf did see momma, and they did get together,  Then I discovered there was another calf, a black one, laying near the cow.  Oh my goodness, another set of twins from this cow.  Great.

Then I decided it might just be a wise idea to put momma and babies in the corral, for we'd been hearing coyotes along the hills.  Once a calf gets to be a week or more old, they have little to fear from a coyote.  But newborn babies, and often their associated afterbirth, can attract the predators.

The cow was having none of that, however.  When I tried to turn her to go through the gate toward the barn she simply out-ran me, with the calves coming along as best they could.  She wanted no part of going to the barn, and headed out over the ridge toward an area where the rest of the cows, and Mr. Boo my bull, were settling down for the night.

"Well," I figured, "being with the rest of the cattle is better than being alone.  And since she's not going to cooperate, I really don't have a whole lot of choice."

I made one more trip into the back field after dinner.  By now it was dark, and all the cattle were settle down in the same location.  "I guess that's all I can do tonight."

The next morning as soon as it was light, I went looking.  The cattle had moved and were on top of the west ridge.  This morning, the Santa Gertrudis cow wanted to get her calves off the ridge, and went toward the barn.

Momma and babies the next morning.

Cow and the twins heading for the shelter of the olive tree.

When it appeared she was going to take them to the olive tree and make that spot their home of the day, I felt it was close enough to the house to give the calves some protection, and left them alone.

When I returned from town, I went looking for the cow and her babies.  The black baby was curled up beside a fence on the south end of the field, the cow was grazing in the middle, but no red baby could be found, anywhere.  I looked in every spot I thought she might have hidden that baby, but with no luck.  That calf had simply disappeared.

Most disturbing was my neighbor reported he'd had a calf killed and eaten by the coyote the night before. Now I began to fear a cougar might have gotten the baby if she bedded it down out in the back field.  But nothing was found.

The next morning I went to the barn in the dark to feed hay.  Up on top of the hay stack, I heard a calf bawl.  The direction of the bawl was toward my neighbor's cows, and I thought it was most probably one of his calves.  I'd pretty much given up hope on my calf.  Something had killed and eaten it.

But, logic told me to at least go check it out when I was done feeding.  I parked the quad to open the gate, and again heard a calf bawl.  This time it was definitely close enough to be in my field.  I saw a bit 300 lb calf standing near the bridge, but that sound hadn't come from her.  Then something moved, and this one was the right size.

I closed the gate, jumped on the quad and quickly drove over to that spot.

There was the bright red baby, looking for her momma.  I took no chances, I swept her up in my arms, carried her to the corral where I'd put the cow and the one remaining baby, and shoved the red calf under the gate.

The calf bawled, the cow answered, and when the calf latched onto the udder, she got a loving lick on the behind from her mother.

The twins and another calf, today.

Lucky Certainly Was

Lucky, shortly after she joined our hilltop menagerie.

Lucky today.  She's grown a little, but not too much.

Living in the country, several miles from any town, we see the occasional pet that gets abandoned along our road. Lucky was one of the drop-off dogs.

A few months ago, our hired man came roaring up the drive on our neighbor's quad.  Working for the neighbor that day, he saw his dogs attacking a small black dog.  He yelled at the bigger dogs, then grabbed up this frightened little dog.

She didn't appear to be badly injured, though she did have a canine tooth hole in her back right leg.  He handed the dog to my wife. "Can you take care of this little one.  The neighbor's dogs attacked her. I had to get her out of there."

My wife, Sharon, is a Registered Nurse.  Her occupation has been taking care of sick and injured people, so caring for a small frightened dog was certainly something she knew how to do.

We put the shivering little dog in our kennel to contain her, and so our dogs wouldn't frighten her, though we were sure they wouldn't hurt her.

The next day she visited our vet. We learned the wound on her leg wasn't at all serious, and she didn't have a chip so there was no way to tell where she came from.  The vet said she was two or three years old, and in good health.

It was soon apparent we had expanded out hilltop by one more. She was a gentle and loving dog, and fit into the family easily. We decided an appropriate name should be Lucky, for she had the tremendous good fortune to land in our kennel. We didn't know just how lucky she really was though.

As she became acclimated to our hilltop, she began eating well and gaining weight. One day, after having been gone a few days, I was startled to see the size of Lucky's tummy. "Sharon, you've gotta stop feeding this little dog so well.  She's getting huge."

Uh oh, that's puppies, not from good meals.  Back to the vet for a pregnancy test, then an x-ray to see how many fetus there were.  This tiny dog had eight babies, and they seemed to be growing at a prodigious rate.

We had to assume Lucky had been bred by a large dog. Knowing there was a difficult, if not impossible delivery in the offing, she'd been dumped along our road by her original owners.  It wasn't medically practical to let her carry them to term, nor to let her deliver them, so she was quickly spayed.

Today, Lucky has joined our hilltop, giving Tinker Bell our chihuahua, and Beau our aging boxer, company.  Tinker and Lucky love to chase the rabbits and squirrels.  But Lucky is amazingly fast.  We're pretty sure she is at least part Jack Russell Terrier.

And of course, Tinker and Lucky sleep on the bed with us, burrowing under the covers for comfort.  Beau crawls up there some nights, but usually sleeps on a pad in front of the closet.

Somehow, Lucky doesn't seem quite sufficient, but Unbelievably Fortunate doesn't fit on a name tag well.