Today Aunt Jeanette writes:

When I was a little girl, making mud pies was great fun! They were flavor-enhanced with gravel, twigs and leaves. I baked them in the sweltering sun on an old, discarded board until they were a delicious slate gray.

However, finding a newly born mud pie in the dead of winter, treading water, and trying to keep his little nose above that same water is NOT fun! That is exactly what Dan found one evening a couple of weeks ago.

Dan and I had planned to go to our school’s production of “Miss Nelson is Missing” when I had a phone call from our son. “Get all the sheets and towels ready. I am bringing a calf in.” By the time I rounded up all the old sheets and towels, he was through the kitchen door with a mud-covered, half-dead calf. Darren didn’t hold out much hope for the calf, but I do not give up easily. I put him on a sheet, which was immediately covered with mud. I sat down beside him and started rubbing with the towels. It didn’t take long for them to become mud-soaked, either. And, as you can imagine, I was also covered with mud, clear down to my fingernails. I pulled his little head into my lap and we had a long talk.

Well, he kept flopping his head back and I kept pulling it up. He started kicking a little and I had a glimmer of hope. “Involuntary muscle spasms,” they told me. “Don’t get your hopes up.” Well, I did anyway.

After several hours of rubbing, using my blow dryer to warm him up, and telling him he would survive, he did just that. Dan was finally able to take him out to the barn later that night, and the next morning he found him standing up. I regret not taking a picture of the little mud pie in my kitchen, but this is the picture Dan took the following morning.

We never did get to the play, and it took quite a while to clean my kitchen and me, but we do have a nice, healthy calf! Before too much longer Mud Pie will be baking in the summer sun!

Until we walk again …