Thursday, March 31, 2011

Welcome to Jurassic Farm

It has been a Very. Long. Day. And a noisy one too.

Polly yelled the whole day through. I let her out of her pen this morning and let her meet Matilda and the Brat Pack (Smokey and Pearly, as well as little Thor). The calves all yelled. Polly yelled back. We sometimes jokingly call our farm Jurassic Farm because of all the noise (reminiscent of the dinosaurs in the movie Jurassic Park). Today was one of those days.


I think I was secretly hoping that Matilda - maternal, will-nurse-everyone Matilda - would "adopt" Polly on sight and ease the poor kid's loneliness.

Nothing doing. While she certainly wasn't aggressive, Matilda left no doubt as to who was boss.


Things went better with Thor. You could almost hear Polly thinking, "All right! A kid brother!"


Polly was lonely. Where she came from, there was mama and no other cows, so she didn't have to deal with anything as primitive as a pecking order. But here, she has to get used to being the low gal on the totem pole. She certainly made friends with Thor and Smokey, and as the day went on Matilda was more and more tolerant, but no one really "warmed" to the poor kid.

And she kept trying to sniff out Matilda, doubtless recognizing a mother figure when she saw one.


And all day long, she yelled until I thought she would go hoarse. At last in the afternoon I closed her into her pen. Younger Daughter and her friend Miss Calamity spent some time brushing and petting her.


Meanwhile there's been a shrieking wind all day, the bull and steer got loose and kicked up their heels in a flamboyant fashion across the neighbor's land until we could round them up, and the sucking mud continues to squelch everywhere. I have a column and an article due tomorrow, the chicks have gone past the awww-cute stage into the stinky stage, and the State of Idaho is claiming we owe them $1054.16 (which we most assuredly do NOT).

Maybe things will be better tomorrow.

12 comments:

  1. Aw, man! One of THOSE days. I hate those days. The only way out of a gauntlet is straight through.

    Just Me.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "I think I was secretly hoping that Matilda - maternal, will-nurse-everyone Matilda - would "adopt" Pearly on site and ease the poor kid's loneliness."

    Pearly or Polly???? Too many cows with "p" names, LOL.....

    It always goes like that, everything colliding all at once ~ the state of Idaho has meetings with calves just so it can coordinate the chaos....At least there's no fighting or bloodshed (I mean the animals).....Thor probably accepts Polly because he's no longer the runt around there, hehe....

    Tomorrow will be better.....

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh, Man, what a day!

    I don't know why, because I don't see an immediate, or direct connection to your situation, but an old truism immediately popped into my mind when I read it: With any large organization, especially a bureaucracy, beware the low person on the totem pole, because the person who has the power to say "NO" often does NOT have the power to say "YES."

    In this case, I'm guessing that a low person is saying you owe the dough -- Oh, I like that! -- but it's a higher person who has the power to turn the page, and see that, "Oh my Gosh, you don't."

    Sometimes going around the gauntlet -- before you get stuck IN it -- is worth a try. It also introduces triangulation. With another person, sometimes at a higher level involved, you're no longer stuck butting heads with one, single person who only sees one single "correct" outcome, and doesn't want to lose.

    Just my 2 cents. Good luck!

    Bill Smith

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thinks could always be worse PLUS you have a book coming out soon!! At least you don't have the flu (or maybe you wish you did!).
    "Nothing very good or very bad lasts very long," ........from Dr.JHH, my father.
    K in OK <><

    ReplyDelete
  5. Oops - thanks NatureGirl, it was supposed to be "Polly." Yep, one of those days.

    - Patrice

    ReplyDelete
  6. 'Things' not 'thinks.'oops.
    At least you have some really nice pictures from the 'funny farm' and your new picture on WND is very professional,too.
    K in OK <><
    NO sun in OK for 6 days......cold and rainy.
    It could always be worse, I guess, we could be in Japan.

    ReplyDelete
  7. To hell with farming!!! Well not really, but it does seem like everyting opposes me some days.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Those nasty government claims-we got one yesterday from the Federal Government. We don't owe them, either, but now I have to go and try to find the proof. Maybe it's just an April Fool's joke, like all of the snow we're getting today.

    ReplyDelete
  9. There is a "pecking order" in all facets of our earthly nature of survival.

    I'm going now to sharpen my beak!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Sort of reminds me of a human child. Sometimes when you know that nothing is wrong you just have to let them scream themselves out.

    ReplyDelete
  11. The cows looked nice and healthy, 'almost couldn't find your kids in the picture, they were so well 'camouflaged-LOL' but seriously though ''those look like 'subdued rank patches for the USAF, who was in the service'.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Bureaucratic Hell -- UPDATE

    I just happened on this informative, infuriating, and -- in its way -- entertaining How-To in dealing with a bureaucracy. I mean, these people are supposed to HELP us, right?

    http://bit.ly/fZrok6

    Bill Smith

    ReplyDelete