Читать книгу The Red Cow and Her Friends - Peter McArthur - Страница 7

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I know I should have a silo for the cornstalks or at least a cutting box, but I haven't either, and the result is that I have trouble. How to get ten-foot stalks into a four-foot manger is a problem that I have to wrestle with every day and I am no nearer the solution than I was at the beginning of the winter. I have to stand them on end in front of the cows and as the soft ears were all left on the stalks, the cattle go at them wildly and toss them all over the place in their hurry to get the ears. The result is that every few days I have to clean out the rejected stalks from the mangers and the front of the stalls and that makes more trouble. I wish some one would tell me why it is that the tines of a fork will slip through cornstalks so easily and are so hard to pull out. I do not find very much trouble in getting a good forkful of the stalks but when I carry them out to the hole in the barnyard where I am piling them in the hope that they will rot some time I have a wrestle with them that starts me quoting poetry:

"On Astur's throat Horatius

Right firmly placed his heel;

And thrice and four times tugged amain,

Ere he wrenched out the steel."

When I have thrown down my load I find that every tine has three or four stalks on it so that it looks like Neptune's trident entangled with seaweeds. But though it is a nuisance clearing out the stalks in this way I have a vivid recollection of trying to pitch manure that had cornstalks mixed with it and I have made up my mind that that will never happen again. I try to keep them out of the manure as far as possible, even though I may be robbing the "stercoraceous heap" of some of its most valuable fertilising constituents.

The more I work among cows and study their ways the more puzzling they become to me. Sometimes when I am feeling a bit conceited I think I understand them pretty well and then something happens that puts me entirely out of countenance. One warm day last week, when I had let them out to water, I thought I would let them stand out and sun themselves for a while before driving them back to their stalls. I half remembered that the gate to the young orchard had been opened when the snow was deep and left opened, but I did not give it a thought. The government drain had been flooded and was covered with slippery ice that I was sure they could not cross, and I felt that everything was serene for a pleasant sunbath for the cows. Half an hour later I took a look to see where they were and every last one of them was in the young orchard picking at some long grass that had been brought into sight by the thaw. There was no waiting about starting to get them out, for you know the way cows have of rubbing their necks against young trees and breaking off limbs. Luckily they had not started rubbing and had done no damage, but I had to do some rushing around before I finally got them out of the orchard. But when I got them back to the icy government drain there was all kinds of trouble. You never saw such a timid bunch of cows in your life. It was absurd to think that they could walk on ice like that and what was more they wouldn't do it. But I knew that they couldn't fly and that they had crossed that ice on the way to the orchard and I was just as stubborn as they were. Gritting my teeth with determination I went at those cows and in a few minutes each one of them had been personally conducted across the ice by an earnest man who was earnestly twisting her tail. I then made the discovery that twisting a cow's tail puts a lot of ginger in her for when the last one was across they began to romp around the field. I saw that I would have trouble getting them into the stable and went to the house to get some one to help. I don't think I was in the house five minutes, but when I went out again with reinforcements, those wretched cows were on the other side of the government drain again and headed towards the orchard gate. Apparently it was no trouble at all for them to cross ice when on the way to mischief. I may say that on the return trip they did not wait for much tail twisting. Possibly the second twist hurts more than the first. Anyway they hustled back and didn't stop to argue with me.