Another Rainy Day

Well, just as promised, yesterday was another rainy day, and even this morning we have had showers. I took advantage of staying indoors and worked on the re-do of my white ribbon quilt. It's coming along and looks better than I ever thought it would. Late in the afternoon we went to haul hay in to feed the heifers and when I got back the sky was darkening but I quickly took a walk; those clouds with lightning can move pre-tty fast! By around 7:00 p.m. a more serious storm was coming our way and we watched as the wall cloud passed over with no funnels sited.

As the clouds passed on to the east, the sun peaked through the rain, just as it was setting.

Poor heifers, their good hay got wet again!

No rainbow this time; I guess it was too dark.

Complaining

How does the old saying go? April showers bring May flowers? This is how my flowers should be looking now;

however, we've had more rain than just showers, several days worth, in fact, and when the big iris blooms get weighted down with water, and the wind blows hard, they just give in and topple over, sometimes even breaking the stems and ruining the unopened buds. They are one of my favorite flowers, and after waiting through a long cold winter for their beauty, I'm saddened by the loss.

The old snowball bush suffered too; some limbs were broken.

And late this afternoon, just when I thought I could go to the barn to feed the calf, rain simply poured down. This was taken from the back porch,

and this from the front porch. I'm afraid the ground will be so saturated around the shade trees that one could go over under a strong wind. One of our hay fields is flooded, and more rain is forecast for tomorrow.

I do hate to be complaining, for who knows, in our state this could be the last rain for a long time, but for now we're just having too much of a good thing. Isn't it strange how things happen? Texas is burning in places and we're flooding.

He Is Risen

"...the angel said to the women, Fear not: for I know that ye seek Jesus which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said." Matthew 28:5,6

Rabies and Fearful Times -- the Finale

Uncle Dewey came before supper with bad news: a neighbor had killed a mad fox. "You know," he said, "that cow may be mad." So Daddy called a veterinarian to come look at her. "The only way to be sure is to kill her and send off her head to be tested," he said. "I can't afford to kill my cow!" exclaimed Daddy. "Maybe she ate some poison weeds or something. She could be alright in a few days." But the vet told Daddy he should kill the cow for the safety of the family. Mama expressed her concerns about having used the cow's milk, but he told her, "No the milk was alright to use. The disease is passed through the saliva of the animal." And then he asked if the girls played around the barn and she told him they played in the sand close to the barn. "Then it's possible they could have picked up the germs from the sand if they had a cut or scrape."

So Daddy went to the house for his gun while some other men got the cow back inside the barn. This time the door was fastened with a chain. The cow went wild inside the stall, hitting the walls, pawing the ground and snorting. She put her head under the sill of the barn, trying to get out; her head stuck and she couldn't get up. Uncle Dewey put the barrel of the gun close to the cow's head and pulled the trigger; a single shot rang out, and the cow slumped to the ground.

The cow's head was cut off and put into a container with ice packed all around and the vet took it into town and shipped it to the State Health Department. Daddy and Uncle Dewey hooked chains onto the cow's legs and pulled her out of the barn, then took her to a brush pile and lit a fire underneath. Quickly the air was filled with the stench of burning hair and flesh.

The long anxious days of waiting for an answer from the tests were difficult, and when the report came, it said the cow had rabies. Mama, Daddy, Wanda, Charlotte and Uncle Dewey would have to take the rabies vaccinations. The doctor explained the series of shots to them: each person would receive fourteen shots, one each day, in the large muscles of the arms, legs and hips, and since Charlotte was so small, her shots would be put in her tummy.

By the end of the first week of shots, Charlotte was bruised and sore; hard swollen lumps were on her tummy and she felt feverish and didn't play much. "She's so little to have this much pain; she was just beginning to gain a little weight after her bout with scarlet fever, and now this had to happen." Mama buried her head in her hands and cried.

The soreness slowly left their muscles. At first, every headache and every pain was thought to be a symptom of rabies, but the fear lessened with the passing of time.

Rabies and Fearful Times -- continued

"Don't move or say anything!"said Daddy in a frightened whisper and he kept the beam of light from the flashlight on the fox as it walked around the feet of Daddy, Mama, and Wanda. They stood motionless as the fox sniffed Daddy's shoes, then ignored them and ambled off into the darkness. "Get in the house!" Daddy ordered. "Something was wrong with that fox! I'll bet it was mad," he said.

During the night the old dog came to the porch, licking himself, and Daddy said is was a sign that he might have been bitten. So the dog was chained up until enough time had passed to see if he would take rabies. The girls were told to stay away from him. It was hard for Charlotte to stay away from Pudge; while Wanda was at school he made a good companion, but she knew Mama and Daddy meant what they said, so she squatted down on the back doorstep and talked to him. "Are you mad about something, Pudge?" The quarantine time passed and the dog showed none of the signs of rabies and so Daddy turned him loose.

One day the milk cow bawled from morning until evening and when Mama tried to get her in the barn she wouldn't go inside to her calf. Charlotte could hear the cow bawling before she went to sleep and when morning came the cow was very restless, circling the barn, bawling. Daddy went with Mama to the barn and when he opened the door to let her inside with her calf, she ran up to the stall and stopped, then went inside. She snorted, pawed the ground, slung her head at Daddy, and kicked at the calf. She turned to the door and Daddy quickly put the calf in another stall and went outside. "I've never seen a cow act like this before. Let's leave her in here today and maybe she'll calm down." All day she bawled and thumped against the walls of the barn; by mid-afternoon the thumping had stopped, but the cow hadn't calmed down. She had broken the latch on the door and was outside the barn. She still bawled.

...to be continued

Rabies and Fearful Times

After a cold winter, spring had finally come. Tender garden vegetables grew rapidly, strawberries put on their red berries, a new calf was in the barn and twenty four new baby chicks tottered about in the yard.

One day Daddy came home and told Mama a neighbor's dog had been bitten by a fox and now it had gone mad. "What's he mad about?" Charlotte had asked. Mama explained that the dog wasn't angry, but that he had rabies, a bad disease that makes an animal act crazy: it slobbers at the mouth and runs in circles like it's having a fit and would probably growl and bark a lot. Daddy had vaccinated his hunting dog, ol' Pudge, so maybe he wouldn't get the disease, but he warned us girls to get in the house quickly if we saw a fox or a dog acting strangely.

For the next few days Mama and Daddy worked in the fields, always cautious, and when nothing unusual happened, they returned to a more normal routine; the girls played in the yard again and the family walked to church at night with less fear. About two weeks later, while at church on Sunday night, we heard a distant, mournful cry. The preacher talked and the cry interrupted now and then, and after church services a man told Daddy the sound seemed to be coming from our house. "It may be a lost pup," someone said as we left church and started walking home by the light of a flashlight. The Sears family walked with us as far as the gate. The pitiful cry interrupted their conversation several times as they talked and then the men said the sound was coming from the house. Daddy carried me and Mama held Wanda's hand; Daddy used the flashlight to brighten the path, and when we reached the steps, a fox came from the shadows under the porch. It was coming toward us.

...to be continued

Beautiful or Bothersome ?

If you were traveling the rural roads of our area, you would see fields covered with these yellow flowers. We have had tourists stop at the community store and ask about them. Farmers call them buttercups; I don't know their scientific name. They have a glossy sheen and are about the size of a nickel. To us who raise cattle, they are a nusiance, choking out the grass until they have made seed and die back. Usually we will spray with a herbicide which would be most effective while the plant is small, but weather conditions aren't always suitable at that time so they can quickly get ahead of the grass. Before pastures here were fertilized with chicken litter we didn't have this weed; perhaps the litter changed the nutrients in the soil. They make a very dense root system and can't be pulled easily if they get started in the garden. So what is beautiful to some is a real bother to us.