Elk Delivery, From the Archives

D. E. Larsen, DVM

“Doc, I have a cow elk that has been walking around the pasture in labor for the last couple of hours,” Frank said into the phone. “I can see a small sac of fluid and a foot once in a while, but she is not making any progress.”

“If she has been at it a couple of hours, we probably should get a look at her. Don’t dart her until I get up there.”

Frank had quite a variety of exotic animals. Sika deer, Fallow deer, some antelope, and a small herd of elk. The elk herd consisted of a bull and five or six cows. There were no facilities for handling any of these. We were stuck with using a capture dart.

“What drug do you want me to use,” Frank asked as we were loading the dart.

“She is not too high strung, and with this difficult birth, a dose of Rompun will probably do the trick. We want her to recover pretty quickly so she will take care of the calf.”

“She is not too big,” Frank observed. “What kind of a dose should we use?”

I had provided a dosage chart to Frank so he would not have to do any calculations on dosage. The chart was set up to give the volume dose in milliliters for each weight in fifty-pound steps.

“Let’s give her a five-hundred-pound dose,” I said. “She might be a little over that, but not by much. And we want her to recover quickly.”

Rompun was a tranquilizer approved for the horse and small animals. We routinely used it at very low doses on cows. It was useful for short-term procedures that required chemical restraint. Its shortcoming was animals who were flat out could suddenly recover and react defensively.

We stepped through the gate into the elk pasture. The bull and the other cows moved to the far corner. We could usually lure the herd to the feed rack with a bucket of apples, but this problem cow was by herself away from the others. I could see her getting up, turning around, straining, and lying down again.

She did not seem to be bothered by our approach. When we were within twenty yards, she stood up, and Frank fired the dart gun, striking her in the hip with the loaded dart. We moved away to allow the drug to take effect.

Once she was on the ground and her head turned to her side, we approached cautiously. 

“Let’s get a rope on her just in case she jumps up when I start working on her,” I said. “We don’t want to have to give a second dose.”

Jim, Frank’s hired man, placed the lasso over her head and backed away. Holding the rope with gloved hands just in case she came alive.

I removed the dart from her left hind leg and applied some Betadine to the wound. Then I washed her rear end and carefully explored her birth canal. She had no response. 

I could feel one front foot and then the nose. I reached deeper. The second foot was to be found in the birth canal.

“The calf has a front leg back,” I said. “I should be able to get it up into position easily. There is plenty of room in there. He will pop right out once the position is corrected.”

I reached in and ran my hand past the shoulder on the calf and along its side. I grabbed the cannon bone on the retained leg and pulled it forward. Then I flipped the hoof up into the birth canal.

The cow elk raised her head when I corrected the leg position of the calf. I grabbed the front feet and pulled. The calf quickly slipped out onto the ground. I pulled the calf around toward the cow’s head and stood up.

“Go ahead and remove that rope, Jim,” I said.

As soon as the rope was off, I gave the cow a slap on the butt. She instantly jumped to her feet. 

At the same time, she kicked with a hind leg. The kick was directed with deadly accuracy at me. She walked away, going only a few steps up the hill.

I was lucky that I was just far enough from her that it only brushed my shirt. I had a neat imprint of the toes of her hoof on my shirt just above my navel.

“I think that would have hurt a little if I had been an inch or two closer,” I said.

“I would guess so,” Frank said, with an expression of concern on his face.

“Let’s just move away, quietly, down the hill. Hopefully, she will return and take care of this calf,” I said.

I quickly gathered my stuff into my bucket, and we moved down the hill. Looking back, she was watching both us and the calf. By the time we got to the gate, she was back licking the calf.

“Frank, I think we got a little lucky,” I said as we opened the gate and left the pasture. “You want to write that dose down on your chart. That worked perfectly.”

“I’ll try to remember to do that when I get back to the house,” Frank said. “Is there anything I need to do with her now?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “She would have probably been coyote food in the wild. There would have been no way for that calf to come out on its own.”

I watched up the hill as I turned my turn to the gate on the end of the lane. Momma elk was over tending to the calf. Things were going to be okay.

Tripping Up the Bully


D. E. Larsen, DVM

Broadbent school in the fall of 1952 had grown to its largest enrollment ever with nearly eighty students in eight grades. 

The school board had discovered that the upper part of Catching Creek was actually in the Broadbent district rather than Myrtle Point. In 1952, they started busing those kids to Broadbent. It meant a long bus ride for the kids, but more students for the school.

Tommy, a small blond first-grade boy, was one of those students from upper Catching Creek. I was in the third grade that year, and Tommy, being so small, was a kid I watched over somewhat.

“David, that other David in your class has been picking on me,” Tommy said as we were waiting for the bigger kids to get out of class.

“What is he doing to you?” I asked.

“He pushes me every time he walks past me,” Tommy said. “And he says he will beat me up if I tell the teacher.”

“My dad says that you have to stand up to a bully, or he will just keep pestering you,” I said.

“Yeah, but David is scary,” Tommy said. “He almost acts like a wild man.”

The other David was a special case. The first two years of school, he and his two sisters were homeschooled. They lived at the top of Dement Creek, almost over the hill where Dement Creek, Flores Creek, and Catching Creek all started. They had no neighbors.

During those first two years, the family would come to school for testing to check their progress. 

David was a holy terror during those visits. My mother tried to say he just didn’t know how to play with other kids, but I just thought he was crazy.

Starting in the third grade, David and his two sisters came to school full time. And it was a constant battle between David and all the other three or four boys in the class.

“Let’s figure out how you can get even with him,” I said.

“He always waits in the hall when we are out of class,” Roy said. “He waits there for his sisters to get out of school.

“I bet we could have Tommy hide behind the door while we stand out in the playground and make fun of David,” I said. “He will get mad and come running at us full speed with his fist in the air.”

“Yeah,” Tommy said. “And when he comes out the door, I could trip him, and he will fall down the stairs.”

“He is probably waiting in the hall right now,” I said. “Let’s just do it now. It will teach him a good lesson.”

 In good weather, half of the double doors were always open. We positioned Tommy behind the closed door.

Roy and I stood out in the school playground so we could see David in the hallway. We started hollering names at him, and sure enough, he came running at us, full steam ahead.

The plan worked so much better than any of us expected. One would have thought it had been conceived by Army generals. David came running out the door, going as fast as he could run, and little Tommy stuck his foot out and tripped him. David fell, ass over tea kettle, down the five concrete steps in front of the school. 

We were probably lucky that he was not seriously injured. But Tommy sort of pranced by David as he picked himself up, looking at scraps on both of his elbows. 

We laughed and patted Tommy on the back and went over to the swings. David got up and went back into the hall to wait for his sisters, and he never said a word.

For the rest of David’s time at school, he was never a problem again, not for us and not for Tommy. David and his two sisters moved to Texas at the end of our fourth-grade year. 

Tommy and I learned a valuable lesson that day, as did many other kids who watched the event. If you ignore the bully’s actions, you just enable him to continue his abuse. In the end, you live with the constant fear of what he will do next. There comes a time you have to stand up to the bully and trip him up the best that you can.

Post Script:

Lessons learned in elementary school often have applications to later, more severe events in one’s life.

Early Morning Education 

D. E. Larsen, DVM

I was just stepping out of the shower when the phone rang. “I hope Sandy is awake enough to answer it,” I thought.

“That was Jack, up on Whiskey Butte. He is pretty excited,” Sandy said. “He has heifer down in the middle of the road going into his place. She apparently fell or rolled down a high bank onto the road. He is not sure, but she might be in labor. I told him you would run right up there before going to the office.”

“Yes, I better get on the road,” I said as I quickly dressed. “I will grab a bite to eat at Midway Market on my way back to town. If I hurry, I should be able to get to the clinic not too long after eight.”

The morning air was brisk as I quickly checked the truck to make sure I had everything. I probably drove a little too fast, but the traffic on Whiskey Butte Road was sparse before seven.

I made the turn onto the road down to Jack’s place and slowed for the hairpin curve at the creek. I could see the heifer lying right in the middle of the road, not far from the curve. I pulled my truck to the far right of the road and came to a stop.

She was right in the middle of the narrow gravel road. There was no way to get around her. It looked like she had slid down the bank on the hill side of the road. There was a steep drop on the other side that went down to the creek.

When I got out of the truck, the heifer raised her head and struggled briefly to get up before laying back down and straining. I could see the nose and front feet of the calf at the vulva. This should be an easy delivery.

As I was getting things out of the truck, I could see the school bus making its way around the sharp curve. 

“Looks like the kids are going to get an early lesson this morning,” I said to myself.

The bus pulled up close to the back corner of my truck. I held my hand up to show the driver five fingers. I should be done in five minutes. I could see the kids piling up at the front windows of the bus. Hopefully, he keeps them on the bus.

I put a rope on the heifer and tied it to my front bumper, just in case she decides she wants to leave. Then I tied her tail out of the way with twine tied around her neck.

The hardest part of the job was getting on my knees on the gravel road. But I got down and scrubbed her vulva before doing a quick vaginal exam to make sure things were what they appeared to be. This would be a tight fit, but the heifer had already done most of the work.

I put the nylon OB strap on both front feet and positioned the calf jack. I glanced at the bus, and the kids were now glued to the front window and fighting for position.

I started jacking the calf out. The vulva stretched but did not tear. Some heavy mucus came out of the calf’s nose. Then the head popped clear of the vulva. I worked the jack faster, and as the hips came to engage the pelvis, I pulled the calf jack down, almost to her hocks. This would push the hips higher in the pelvis and allow them to clear. I remembered the hip lock that Jack had on my first visit.

When the hips cleared the pelvis, the calf almost shot out the rest of the way. The calf raised his head and shoulders and gave a little shake to clear more mucus from his nose. The bus almost bounced as the kids all jumped up and down and cheered. 

I quickly treated the calf’s navel and moved him to the edge of the road. Then I checked the heifer’s birth canal. There were no injuries, and there was no other calf onboard.

I rinsed her rear end and untied her tail. Then, I made sure there was plenty of slack in the rope before swatting her on the rump. She rolled up to on her sternum and then jumped to her feet. There were more cheers. The heifer started forward, hit the end of her rope, and swung over the edge of the road. 

I wanted the bus to go by and pick up the kids up the road. I would wait until he came back down the road before releasing the heifer. After the bus eased by us, I moved the calf over under the heifer’s nose. When the bus turned around and came back down the road, the heifer was licking on the calf. All the kids were on the side windows and waving as the bus eased past us again.

I cleaned myself up and released the heifer, then drove up to Jack’s house to tell him all was well and he could drive the heifer and her calf up the road any time.

By the time I got back to the clinic, they already had heard the story from Jim, the principal at Foster School. The bus made it to school a little late, but the kids were all anxious to share their morning lesson with the rest of the students.

Photo by Raphael Nast on Unsplash.