Fake

The dust was glued to the skies and hung over the yards like bad news on a Sabbath. The vet was in a hurry to get back to his surgery, but the listless cattle were slow to move in the midday heat.

It started off as the perfect day in the wet tropics of North Queensland. The yellow sun mellows over the Kirrima Range smoothing the rainforest all the way down the Kennedy Valley to the sea. Four or five sulphur-crested cockatoos winged soundlessly on the air out of a massive blue gum, only to shatter the quiet with their screeches as they swooped down towards the neighbouring cane fields. Stumpy tongues wiggling and eyes rolling in anticipation of an early morning sugar treat while gnawing through the cane stems. Serve him right, I thought with a smile and gave the birds a tongue-in-cheek nod of approval. Just the week before, my neighbour threatened to shoot my cattle for browsing through his cane, after they found a weak spot in the fence during the night. No wonder cane farmers are chubby fellows, binoculars on the side with stubby in hand on his big tractor while the poor skinny cattle farmers have to run for dear life to save a cow!

But as the sun climbed up the blue sky mountain it really turned the gas on high. We rushed around the yards to try and get things moving. The cows that’d had embryos implanted six weeks earlier were sorted through the round yard and pushed into the race. I looked at the curtain fig in the corner of the pen, hoping to see a quiver of leaves—just a hint of wind that could move the hot air and the dust—when my eyes fell on Fake. She was standing under the fig with her eyes closed, chewing peacefully on her cud. She was so round that she was actually square! If it wasn’t for the fact that she’d looked like this for the last four years, since her last calf was born, I could have sworn that she was going to drop a calf at any moment. “What am I going to do with you, Fake?” I asked aloud. I lifted my hat to scratch an imaginary itch, hoping to kickstart a brilliant answer to the question. It didn’t work.

Fake did not move a lid.

“Wake up, Fake!” I said loudly and smacked her on the rump. She looked over her shoulder and said wearily in cow language: “What did you do that for? I was just meditating on sensitive cow matters until your rude interruption!”

“Come on!” I said, unperturbed, and pushed the Friesian through the round yard and into the race.

Fake was actually a fantastic cow. We’ve done away with all the Friesian heifers we used in the embryo program, importing Nguni embryos from South Africa to the Genesis stud in the Kennedy Valley. Despite recommendations by several vets, Friesians turned out to be terrible mothers. Motherly instinct was just about scrapped by centuries of selection for milk volume. The heifers would panic in labour and run around in circles, crying. When they finally dropped a small calf, they would not even know how to lick the membrane from the calf’s face! During the hot summer months, they struggled most and lost weight. They could not handle the heat and, instead of grazing, would park under the trees in a creek to stay cool. And that’s not even talking about ticks and flies. They seem to draw them from nowhere, and if you’re not quick on it, they’re ready to die in a week or two. But not Fake. She just cruised along. She didn’t bother much about the heat and humidity, and for some strange reason, the ticks and flies were not interested in her. And as I said, she was always in top condition and ready to calve!

The only problem is, she didn’t...

“Stephen, that Friesian coming into the crush now is not an embryo cow!” I shouted at the vet. It was Fake’s turn.

“She’s looked like this for the last four years. Can you preg test her for me, please?”

Stephen palpated the ovaries and the uterus for a while and pulled his hand out. “She’s no good, mate. Her ovaries are small and atresic. This cow will never calve again. You’re better off putting her with the steers on the truck to the meat works tomorrow!”

That evening I walked through the holding paddock to check on the steers to be loaded on the truck the following day. Fake had parked herself on the side under the gum trees. It was clearly below her status to share a paddock with steers.

“Fake, the vet said time’s up. You’re climbing the truck in the morning with the steers.”

Fake turned her head slowly in my direction and looked me in the eye. “So what do you know?” she asked in cow language while chewing her cud in deep thought.

The pregnant moon above the trees broke the Friesian’s black-and-white puzzle. It lit up the white patches like LED lights and merged the black patches with the night beyond. What was Fake turned into a mother-of-pearl lampoon with only the soft grinding of the cud in the quiet night giving away an earthly link.

And suddenly, I found myself 30 years back on some moonlit hill in Africa.

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Just as I started wondering about life outside the walls of the hospital, the sun slipped a final spotlight through the window, pinpointing me before switching off for the night. This was followed by a knock on my door.

“Sawubona Baba” I greeted respectfully as I opened the door. “How can I help you?”

My last patient was a well-dressed Zulu man in his fifties.

“Sawubona Udokotela” he replied and held up two white palms supported by a smile made out of pearl-white teeth. “I am not sick, Udokutela,” he explained, “but my cow, she cannot push the calf!”

He took his hat off in respect and rested it against his chest.

Baba Tusi explained that he had bought some Friesian cows a couple of months earlier from a white farmer at Pongola to join his Nguni herd. His brother told him that these cows of the white people can give a large amount of milk, and one cow could give enough milk for all his wives and all his children in one go. And this turned out to be true. If he milked the three cows he had enough for his neighbours and their children as well. But tonight he is worried that his cow will die. She had been in labour for three days and seemed unable to push the calf out.

We drove for nearly an hour and then walked another hour to where the Friesian cow stood panting and heaving in the corner of a paddock. We had no torches, but the full moon generously lit up the problem. With every push, the calf’s nose and tongue would momentarily protrude under the cow’s tail, only to slip back as the contraction eases. “It has been going on like this since Tuesday, Udokutela,” Baba Tusi explained, “but it does not get any further.”

I inserted my hand into the birth canal. It was a big calf but he felt floppy and I could not detect any movement.

“I’m sorry Baba Tusi,” I said, “but I think the calf is dead”

His dark shadow nodded under the stars.

We tried to pull the calf’s head by hand with no success. I turned the calf around in the uterus, wanting to extract him with his hind legs first, but still no success. We tipped the cow on her side and pulled her bum against a corner post. We then tied a rope around the calf’s head, kicked our heels in and pulled with all our combined power. With every contraction we gained a fraction and then held tight waiting for the next contraction. Finally, the dead calf slipped out of the passage. The three of us lay panting on the grass in the moonlight, soaking in the relief.

Strange how the moon makes you feel and look clean, despite being covered in blood and cow dung.

Well past midnight, I climbed (real clean) into the sheets behind Hannelie’s back.

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I jumped out of bed, woken by the engine breaks of the truck coming up the valley road. I had slept in!

I rammed my legs down the denim pipes and into my boots. On the jog to the yards, I managed to fix two buttons on my stubborn shirt. The steers stood up and stretched as I came around the bend in the road. Fake was still standing under the gum trees in the corner.

And then the truck roared into view a mere hundred yards away and slowly crawled up towards the yards. Fake looked at the truck and arched her back.

“What is she doing?” I thought and slowed down my pace.

The truck was now only fifty yards away from Fake.

Without taking her eyes off the cattle truck, Fake arched her back again, stood her hind legs apart and effortlessly dropped a healthy bull calf in the morning dew on the grass!

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