Uncle Coe and the Calf

 Uncle Coe and the Calf

AKA Imprinted Memory

After he retired, my grandfather Berton raised cattle and baled hay from our pasture to feed them. He had an old barn that held maybe fifty or sixty square bales. To this day, I can still remember the earthy smell when I walked inside that barn: dried hay, dust, grass, and dirt.

The ceiling of that old barn was only about five and a half feet high. I always figured some Cajuns built it, because nobody else would make a barn you had to constantly duck to walk through. We were always hitting our heads walking inside that old thing.

We used that barn and the attached pen beside it to round up cattle, vaccinate them, brand them, or send them to the sale barn. Branding took six or seven men. I was little enough to stay out of their way, but close enough to watch. They’d bring several cows into the pen, pick one, and wrestle it down.

I remember one time, while they were rounding them up, Uncle Coe grabbed a calf by the tail.

That calf took off, dragging him around the pen while it jumped and kicked its back legs. Coe held on through one lap, then another. By the third trip around, it looked like he might stay attached to her forever.

Then the calf slowed down—just for a second. But Coe kept running.

The calf jumped and kicked, catching him square in the stomach. That stopped him dead in his tracks.

Once we’d stopped being stunned and finished laughing (That's how the Daigles deal with trauma-our own or others), the men went over to check on him. As Coe lifted his shirt, we all started laughing all over again.

There, right in the middle of his stomach, was a hoof print as clear as day.

Well, they say you can’t catch a tiger by the tail, and apparently, a calf isn’t much better.

This is not the culprit. This was a random cow I took a picture of in a random pasture in Cameron.