Making cow-pokes is quite a job, and the art has been lost in this neighbourhood, where they have well-bred cows that lack ambition. But I was told that a board on her face would do the trick just as well. They did not know the Fenceviewer strain. After dressing her in her new costume I turned her loose and watched through a knothole in the drive-shed. She walked straight to the fence near the carrots and began to experiment. The board bothered her, for she couldn't make a head-on attack on the fence, but it didn't bother her long. She soon found that by approaching sideways she could see well enough to swing her head between the wires and then push through. I interrupted her before she reached the carrots, and then Sheppy drove her to the other side of the field so that I could get time to cool off and think things over. But I didn't cool off. I had noticed that while the brute was working her way through the fence she was being watched by her mother, Fenceviewer I., the original red cow of the lot, but as the old pirate had not learned the trick sooner I did not think she would learn. Ten minutes later I found her at the carrots. It had finally dawned on her how the trick was done. I drove her out with sticks and harsh cries, but I had barely closed the gate before she was poking through the fence again in the most approved manner of her daughter.
That settled it. I rounded up the flock and drove them into a field that is surrounded by woven wire fences and left them there. The pasture doesn't amount to much, but it is not likely that the weather will make it possible for us to pasture them more than a week or two longer, so they will have to be given extra feed night and morning and have their run confined to the cow-proof field. Next year, if they have not forgotten the trick, they will have to be sold or I will be forced to put up new fences such as would not be needed for reasonable and right-minded cows.
[XVII.—Teaching a Calf]
When I got home I found a fresh calf waiting to be taught how to drink out of a pail. Now that several days have passed, I feel that I can mention the subject in proper language. Breaking in young calves is just the same job now as it was when the world was young. I dare say there is really nothing new that one can say about it, but there seems to be a sort of relief in saying some of the same old things over again. This is a particularly lusty and likely calf, grandson of Fenceviewer I., "that serpent of Old Nile," familiarly known as the Red Cow. He proves that there is something in the law of atavism, for he takes after his unregenerate and belligerent grandmother rather than after his gentle, though somewhat sneaky, mother. Anyway, when I took the pail of milk and started in to nourish him I found him more stiff-necked than a Cabinet Minister. Still, the line of approach was better. I straddled his neck and pushed his head into the milk so that he was forced either to drink it or inhale it. One could hardly treat a Cabinet Minister in that way, much as he would like to. But to our calf. Once more the lesson has been forced on me that when feeding a calf one should not be arrayed in the glory of Solomon, or in other words that he should not wear the clothes he wore to the city especially if he ever expects to wear them there again. Even a commodious pair of overalls is not a sufficient protection. The boy who was hovering on the outskirts of the trouble and pretending to help was properly dressed for the occasion in a three-piece suit—shirt, pants, and one suspender. When that calf gave a sporadic bunt that squirted milk into my eye and variously plastered me, I wanted to give him a six months' hoist with the toe of my boot, but I restrained myself. (You will notice that Parliamentary phrases stick in my vocabulary after a visit to Ottawa.) However, I am glad to report that the calf is now so much subdued that the boy in the three-piece suit is able to attend to him.