Pt 2: What I Learned From the Back of a Cow

Real life.

That's what I have been stepping in all morning. That's what I am about to stick my hand into right now.

The vet, a stooped-shouldered, gray-haired, bespectacled man who looks as though he's lived through four and a half decades of cow palpating and castrating, orders me to put on a glove. When it comes to doing things that make me nervous or scared, I'm not much of a pushover; I have no qualms about saying "no" if I feel uncomfortable. But when Doc tells me to put on the shoulder-length glove, I find I can't disappoint him. He says everyone should palpate a cow, or feel an unborn calf, at least once.

How does one feel an unborn calf, you ask?

With a shoulder-length glove on.

Palpating the female cow means the vet puts his or her hand into the anal cavity of the bovine, reach into the uterus and check for a fetus, or in the case of the cow I am about to palpate, a seven-month bred unborn calf.

After squirting liquid dish soap on my glove (worn on my left hand, even though I'm right-handed, per Doc), I eye up the back end of my patient. She is quiet and docile. Doc has already palpated her and learned she is not only sweet-tempered, but my last chance to do this, since she's the last cow in line. I stand directly behind her and mentally prepare myself. My conversation earlier with Doc goes through my mind:

"What happens if, when your hand is inside, she decides to poop?" Cows are not known for holding their bowels. In fact, I had gotten a picture earlier of a calf who got too close to his mother's hind end. I've seen cows go anywhere, any time, no matter who or what was under them.

With a completely straight face, Doc answered me. "You gotta be quick."

So said the man who is now covered from the waist down with bovine excrement. And he still has to drive home.

I take hold and move her tail to the side with my right hand and press into the anal hole with the other. I know I'm making a face because the others are laughing at me. Especially because my left hand isn't going anywhere.

"You gotta push harder." I think Doc might be laughing at me, too, but it's hard to tell. So maybe I'm a bit tenative in my reach. I have no desire to be kicked by a cranky cow who has every right to be, considering what I'm attempting. The cow backs away from me and I grit my teeth. Remind me again why everyone has to try this? I want to ask this out loud but I'm afraid to be lippy with a man who puts his hand in cows for a living.

I decide I am not going to wimp out. So I widen my stance and push harder. Little by little, I push in and I realize, with a jolt of reality, that I'm halfway up my forearm in a cow's rectal cavity. My left arm is now the warmest part of my body, which, in a gross sort of way, is nice, considering I had been clutching a cup of coffee and shivering to keep warm two minutes ago.

It doesn't get much more real than this, does it? This isn't a pre-packaged filet mignon or a T-bone steak hot off the grill. This is life unprotected, living outside my little suburbia box.

Her muscles are contracting around my wrist. I am completely focused on the odd sensations.

"Do you feel it? Are you in there? The hoof is right there." Doc is shooting rapid-fire questions at me. How do I know if I'm "there"? Pressing my hand down I feel bone. All I can picture is a restaraunt commercial with rotating ribs over the barbie.

I press my arm in further and I feel a lump. I make a shocked face and I see a flash. Great. They are now taking pictures of me with my arm elbow deep in the back end of a side of beef.

"Do you feel it now? Try to grab the hoof." Doc is talking to me through the side of the chute. I nod my head, pray I'm not grabbing a lung or a bladder and reach for the lump. It's round and immediately pulls back. The cow pulls back, too, and I take my hand out. I laugh in sheer delight--I just touched an unborn calf! 

Everybody should try it.