I LIKE THAT my son
and I played together, laughed out loud, and hugged each another long enough to
absorb each other’s energy. I discovered unconditional love the moment I knew I
was pregnant.
My sweet boy was born in Edmonton, Alberta and after our
release from the hospital we returned to our forty-acre hobby farm in Millet, a
small farming community approximately fifty-five kilometers south of the
capital city. My husband, at the time, worked in the nearby city of Wetaskiwin
while my son and I worked the farm. Our daily rituals included collecting the
eggs from the chicken coop, feeding the chickens and the four charolais bulls,
each weighing around 500 kilograms, cleaning the barn, picking weeds from the
garden in the summer, and shoveling a path from our home to the barn and coop,
and to the main road in the winter. Regardless of the weather, if my boy and I
had to go outside it meant packing him into a baby carrier. Loaded up, I
performed our duties without incident until one day when one of the bulls decided he wanted to join us in the chicken coop. I heard him snort and I
turned around to face his huge skull flanked by two large eyes scanning my son
and I from top to bottom.
“Get out!” I shouted.
He didn’t move and I knew it would take some shoving on my
part to move him back. It’s not common for a steer to walk backward. I was
stuck with what to do until I increased the grip on my flat shovel. I lifted it
up and brought it down hard on his forehead. He turned his head and led the
rest of his body away from us. He was angry and pawed the ground with his front hoof. That signal was enough of a warning for me to slam the chicken coop
door behind us and run for it. We scrambled over the locked fence and ran to the house. My son and I celebrated our safety with a warm bottle of
milk for him and a cool drink of lemonade for me.
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| Get back Mr. Charolais! |
