"I'm a fawn, I'm a fawn..."

Someone was mooing all last night. She had shut up by the time I went out this morning, but I suspected it might be 170. Partly because when we palpated cows a couple of weeks ago, she was so pregnant the calf practically came up and shook my hand. But mainly because when I walked out this morning she tried to kill the dogs. Granted, Danny was pretty much asking for it (don't take a border collie into a pasture full of mama cows. He has no sense and they have no tolerance), but still, 170 has been pretty easy going until today. She was looking around with a sort of strained expression, like she had left something--say, a calf--somewhere and couldn't remember where exactly.

I gave up on waiting for her to remember and walked the fences. And, way off to one side of the big pasture we just opened up yesterday, was a calf lying half under the fence. The grass was really deep and he was pretending to be a fawn. I hauled him out from under the fence, at which point he decided this fawn thing wasn't working out and bolted away across the pasture, through a fence, and into a huge patch of thistle. These would be the six foot high thistles. The calf plopped down and resumed being a fawn.

I yelled for 170, who amazingly enough responded (all the cows were hanging around out of sight among the trees on Roundtop). She came walloping down the hill (walloping: like galloping, but with a full udder) , through the gate, and headed toward the far side of the pasture, so I think she finally remembered where she'd left the calf. Only now the calf was in a patch of thistle pretending he didn't exist.

"Yo, 170," I said. "Your calf is here." I pointed. She didn't get it. She did stop moving, though, so I started in through the thistles to get the calf up. He exploded out of the thistles and ran toward the gate. I ran in the opposite direction, just in case 170 decided it was all my fault and took a detour to thump me. But she was catching up with her calf, who finally stopped running when he realized milk was now available.

Long story short: cow reunited with calf, person not trampled.