>introducing…
-…Gingersnap! We went out-of-town last weekend and I left my neighbor, Becky, in charge of our little farmyard. She called me and said that our neighbor on the other side, Mr Cox, called her and said that our momma cow and her calf were separated and needed to be back together. Well, she thought what I would have thought…Cookie’s year-old calf , Kitten, had gotten out. She came and checked and they were together. The next day, she got another phone call from Mr Cox saying that the calf really needed to be with its momma. Again, she came and looked and Cookie and Kitten were together. We were confused. Adding to the confusion was his comment that the calf was brown. Brown? Our cows are black and white.
I calculated the time between getting her from the sale barn til now….about nine months. Could Cookie have had a baby? The vet who checked her when I bought her said she was definitely NOT pregnant. But, if Mr Cox says there is a brown calf, there is a brown calf!
Now, I’m frantic…..a baby calf, not with it’s momma. That is not good. Becky is on her way home from town and assures me that she’ll go right over and look for it. In the meantime, I call Mr Cox who says, “You have a calf. I just saw it back on your side of the fence with it’s momma.” We have a calf!
When I got home, I went to the Cox’s to take them more eggs (that’s another story) and thank them for looking out for things while we were gone. He asked me how Becky got the calf back in our fence. When I told him that Becky didn’t do it, didn’t even know there was a new calf, he and Mrs Cox just about fell over laughing. He never knew that Becky (and us) didn’t know what the heck he was talking about!
About the eggs…on my way out of town, I put two dozen of them in a basket on the Cox’s front porch. By the time they found them, something had gotten into them and broken 20 of them on their porch. All over the porch. Do you think maybe the Coxes are wishing we’d move back to town? When I asked them that question, Mr Cox’s pretty, blue eyes twinkled and he said, “No, this is fun!”
Do we have the BEST neighbors, or what?
Thank you, Becky, Jackson, Alvin and Ruth!