My neighbor and good friend, Stan, has never been noted for his propensity to engage in small talk, but his phone call last week set a new record for getting right to the point. Seeing it was him on my caller ID, I answered, “Hello, Stan. What’s goin’ on today?”
“Got a boat?” he asked.
“A boat?”
“A boat… a canoe… something that floats?”
Since it was the second morning of a string of really cold days, I concluded that he certainly wasn’t making a joke about the mud. “What do you need with a boat?”
He told me that he had a calf in the middle of the pond and needed a way to retrieve it before it froze to death. Since Stan and his sons have several farms around here, I asked him where he was, and after hearing that he was just a half-mile west of me, I told him I’d be right there.
I was already bundled up and in the process of feeding my own cattle, so I was able to make it to his pond in about five minutes, all the while envisioning a yearling calf, that had broken through the ice and was in danger of drowning or succumbing to the cold. But, to my surprise as I approached the pond, I could see a small, black, baby calf sprawled on top of the ice in the very middle of a very large pond.
Stan was next to the pond, alongside Nate (their herdsman and a darned good cowboy, to boot) and splicing together used pieces of baler twine, in order to lengthen Nate’s rope to a McCurry-length lasso, that could hopefully be used to retrieve the little critter from his icy bed. As good a cowboy as Nate is, he was unable to toss a loop the 75-80 feet required to reach the calf.
Thinking that the ice just might be thick enough to support me, I stepped out a few feet before the cracking noises made me retreat to the safety of solid ground.
“Thoughts?” Stan asked in his most efficient use of the English language.
In an attempt to match Stan’s brevity of words, I replied, “Yep.”
Grabbing my lariat from behind the seat of my truck (I’m not a cowboy, but I always carry a rope to impress bankers and cattle rustlers), I tied it to Nate’s. Our two ropes, plus about 40 feet of baler twine, would allow Nate and me to each grasp an end and walk on both sides of the pond. When the taut rope reached the calf, we were able to stretch it under its neck and over one knee. Like professional NHL’ers, we slid that shivering beef puck all the way to the pond bank. There, Stan grabbed it, put it on dry land, and steered it toward its anxious momma.
“Nice,” Stan said, with an approving nod.
“Unfortunately,” I answered, “it’s not my first time skatin’ on thin ice.”
