Gus and the Manure Pile

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Manure piles were (and still are to some extent) standard fare on Oregon farms.  They were located around the barn somewhere and served multiple uses.  They came in many shapes and sizes.  Smaller places had a simple pile outside a doorway where the barn was cleaned.  Larger farms had more elaborate piles.  In my experience their edges were the easiest place to collect a can of worms for a day’s fishing.  They also were used to dispose of small animals that were casualties during the year on the farm.  They were the ultimate compost piles.

Gus was a typical barn cat.  Well past middle age when I first met him when I came to Sweet Home in 1976.  Gus was lucky to have been neutered early in his life, but still had his share of scraps defending his turf.  He was nothing special, gray tabby in color and not large, maybe 8 pounds.  He lived with his extended family on a small acreage on a hill outside of Sweet Home.  Grandma and Grandpa lived on the “farm”.  Not much of a farm, but enough for a few cows and sheep and a small barn.  The son and his family lived about a quarter mile up the road on a neighboring taxlot.  When Gus came to the clinic he came with Carol, the daughter-in-law.

Over the first few years of practice in Sweet Home Gus was approaching his golden year.  In those times I didn’t see neutered male cats over 15 years of age.  This was before the advent of the feline leukemia vaccine, and diets did not address urinary tract and heart issues.  For barns cats to reach that age was truly exceptional.

One cold winter morning Grandpa hurried into his pickup truck in the carport on the side of the barn.   It was cold and he was anxious to get the truck started.  “Thump, thump” came from under the hood.  Gus had sought the warmest spot he knew of to sleep the night before.  The warm engine block was one of his favorites.  Usually able to scramble out before the engine started, this morning it didn’t work.

Grandpa knew what the noise meant, he had seen more than one cat caught in a fan belt on cold mornings.  He was disappointed when he found Gus, he had been such a good cat.  Gus was a mess, broken leg with bone poking out, left eye hanging out of the socket, several large lacerations and bleeding from his mouth.  In Grandpa’s mind there was only one thing to do.  Picking up a hammer, he made a quick whack to the back of Gus’ head.  Disposal was easy.  Gus’ final resting place was the manure pile on the other side of the barn.

In most cases that would be the end of the story, but remember, cats have 9 lives.  Gus had already used several of his just surviving to this advanced age.  Now he would need to cash in all the others.

Carol had noticed that Gus had not been to his dish on the back porch for several days.  She mentioned his unusual absence to Grandpa.  Grandpa was quiet, knowing the she would have rushed Gus to clinic and spent a lot of money on an old cat.

The next morning, she heard a noise on the porch.  She opened the door and was aghast at the scene.  There was Gus.  Covered with manure, left eye hanging out, broken and torn.  How had he managed to make it to the door? How had he known which door was the one to provide him help? She carefully boxed Gus and headed for the clinic.  Grandpa was outside as she drove by so she stopped to show him what she had found.  Grandpa had no choice but to confess.  He said that the vet could do a better job than him, assuming that Gus would be put to sleep.  In those years, in Sweet Home, if a cat couldn’t be fixed for $100.00 it probably was not going to be fixed.  Gus would surely be well over that figure.

Carol laid Gus on the exam table and related the story.  Gus looked hopeless to me.  She wanted to know her options. Gus was a pitiful sight as he lay on the table, looking cautiously at me out of his one good eye. 

“What are your options, Gus?”  I thought to myself as I pondered the situation.

My initial thought that Grandpa had Gus’ best interest at heart, he just didn’t do the job very well.  I’m not sure that was what his owner wanted to hear.

“We have a lot problems here” I started.  “Contaminated compound fracture of the tibia, fracture of mandible, eye that needs to be removed, broken teeth and multiple lacerations that are very contaminated.  The first question we need to discuss is do we want to put him through all this over the next few weeks?”

Carol was quick to respond, “We are not going to put him to sleep, not until we don’t have any other option.  I don’t care what it costs. If we have to, Grandpa can log a few trees.  That’s the least he can do after what he did to this cat.”

I knew Grandpa.  He would log his trees for his family or for the Grandkids.  I wasn’t so sure about a cat.

Now we were on to option number 2.  Referral was out of the question. There were no specialty clinics around at that period of time.  If Gus was going to survive it was going to be by my hands only.

“We have several things to do, first we need to sedate him and get him cleaned up, get him on some fluids and antibiotics.”

“The wounds are too contaminated to close; if we clean them up and remove the grossly contaminated tissues, they will heal if he lives long enough.”

“I can probably wire the jaw and remove the broken teeth.  The eye is toast and has to go.”

“The fractured tibia is too contaminated to fix, the ends of the bones are likely dead,  The leg has to go.”

Carol finally spoke, ” I want to save the leg!”

“Can’t be done.”  I responded.

Again Carol spoke, “I want to save the leg, we can try!”

“Okay, we can try, but if it happens it will be a miracle.  And the leg will be short.  We will try.  He will have to stay a few days.  I don’t know what this will cost.”

Carol left, convinced that Gus was going be back to his old self in a few days.  Might take a little longer than that, I thought.

We sedated him with a dose of Ketamine and got him under the spray nozzle in the tub.  After cleaning the manure and dirt, it looked like things were almost doable.  We got him dried off and an IV started.  Antibiotics on board and warmed up a little, he was ready for the first of several procedures.

Putting Gus on some gas anesthesia, we started cleaning wounds.  Shaving hair from the wounds. We removed contaminated tissues and packed with Furacin Ointment (the best topical antibiotic ointment I had at the time).

I worked on the tibia next.  The ends of the bone were dry and brown with debris stuffed into the ends.  I cleaned the wound as best I could.  Calculated that I would have to removed bone from both exposed fragments.  I couldn’t make myself think this was going to be anything but a waste of time. We packed the wound with antibiotic ointment and would do the repair tomorrow.

The left eye was hanging out of the socket and did not require much to remove.  Placed a single suture around the optic stalk and removed the eye.  I could deal with closing the socket later.  

The mouth was clean compared to the rest of the cat.  Gus was missing both upper canine teeth and one lower canine tooth.  His jaw was fractured on the left side and separated at the symphysis (the mid point at the front of jaw were the mandible bones join in a non movable joint).

The symphysis was repaired by passing a 20 gauge wire around the mandibles just behind the lower canine teeth, exiting on the ventral midline where I twisted the ends to tighten the ligature, cut the ends short and buried with a single suture.  The fracture of the mandible was stabilized by wiring around two teeth on each side of the fracture.  Probably will need to do more but later.

The next morning Gus was looking pretty good and actually was ready to get out of here and back to his barn.  We gave him a few laps of gruel and continued the fluids.  We were going to tackle the leg later today.  I still felt this was a waste of time.

With Gus under anesthesia, I went to work on the exposed bone.  To my surprise, I did not have to trim too much bone before I came to bleeding bone.  The marrow cavity appeared pretty clean with the superficial debris was removed.  I repaired the fracture with a threaded intramedullary pin.  Inserted at the knee and threaded down the marrow cavity to the fracture site.  Placed the ends of the exposed bone into normal position and seated the pin into the distal fragment.  This was the common repair at that time.  We will have problems due to the contamination at the fracture site.  I cleaned up the wound as best we could and closed this wound.

Gus was ready to go home for a few days before we started the next round of repair and treatment.

Both Carol and Gus were happy to see each other.  Gus was actually stepping on the fractured leg.  Cats always make surgeons look like they know what they are doing.

Over the next few weeks, Gus became a standard visitor to the surgery room.  We would clean on his open wounds, which were granulating well.  We closed his eye socket and placed an additional wire in his jaw to improve the repair.  On each visit I was more and more cautious on how the leg was healing.  The soft tissues were looking good but I was still skeptical about the bone.  Carol was in great spirits, and I think that Grandpa was getting to come out of the doghouse once in awhile.

Finally, push comes to shove.  Time to x-ray the leg to see how the repair is going.  Gus is still quite a sight.  One eye and one lower canine tooth protruding out on the outside of his upper lip.  Larges patches with no hair, but the wounds are mostly healed.  Probably as good as they would have healed had they been sutured.  He would purr and he was bearing weight on the fractured leg.

The x-rays were better than I expected.  There was some healing but not what was needed.  We would have to try something different.

So at 6 weeks from the time of injury I removed the IM pin.   There was a pretty good fibrous union of the fracture, but no boney union.  The next try was an external fixation device, 4 small pins driven into the bone, 2 above and 2 below the fracture site and bolted to an external pin to fix the bones in position.  A tall order for a cow doctor but I got it done.

Another 4 weeks and we were done.  The leg was healed, Gus was happy, Carol was happy.  I don’t know about Grandpa.  The total dollars are lost to a clouded memory.  Anyway, it was never about the money.

The last time I saw Gus was almost a year later.  Into his golden year now, and with none of 9 lives to spare, he was truly an old cat.  He was in for routine stuff, an abscess on the side of face, (left side, he probably didn’t see the punch coming) and tapeworms.  Still defending his turf and still able to catch a mouse or two. I always wondered about his final resting place.  Was it the manure pile, again?

Brownie, 1953

Brownie, 1953 

D. E. Larsen, DVM

I woke to an empty bedroom. The sky was clear and the morning sun was out, but there was still a chill to the summer air. I laid still and tried to listen to hear my brothers downstairs. I hated to wake to an empty room. Did the monster get them when they got up, was he still waiting for me? I felt confident that I was safe if I watched them get up and dress, but now, I didn’t know.

I stood up and backed up to the far corner of the old double bed. I had to bend over a little because of the slant of the roof on the side of the bedroom. After a deep breath, I ran and jumped, hit the floor on the dead run and made a rapid turn to the open staircase. I bounded down the stairs, taking 2 or 3 steps at a time. I didn’t look back until I was at the bottom. No monster, I opened the door and entered the kitchen as if nothing had happened. Both Larry and Gary were at the table eating breakfast. I huddled up to the wood stove, the only heat in the house. It felt good after my run down the stairs.

“You need to go get dressed and get back down here for breakfast,” Mom said. “Your brothers are planning to go swimming this morning but you guys have to clean the barn first.”

“We can ride Brownie to the river and back,” Gary said. “That way you won’t have to worry about the thistles in the field.”

I hurried back upstairs and dressed. Mom had a bowl of Wheat Hearts mush waiting for me when I got back to the kitchen. I didn’t like mush but Wheat Hearts were better that Oatmeal. The warm mush felt good on a cold morning, and the large glass of milk made it easier to swallow

With the three of us the barn cleaning went fast. Larry was the oldest, and he assigned the chores. Gary scrapped any manure on the flood into the gutter. I went along behind him and used the large barn broom and swept the loose dirt on the floor into the gutter. Larry cleaned the gutter, using the shovel to scrape long sections out the door onto the manure pile. With the job done we could head to river. No need for a bath today.

Back at the house we changed into our swim trunks and slipped on a pair of thongs (flip flops). I hated to cross the lower field in these things because of the thistles. There was no good way to avoid the stickers except when we could ride Brownie.  Gary headed to the pasture to get Brownie. With a couple of whistles he came running. He probably knew he would get the whole lower pasture to himself while we swam. 

Brownie was a Jersey cross steer, solid light brown in color with a pinkish nose. This was his second summer and he was starting to get extra grain every evening. We had raised him from a calf and he was very friendly. He came when Gary whistled. I couldn’t whistle yet but I was trying.

Gary had no trouble getting onto Brownie in the middle of the field. It was a little hard for me so I would wait at the gate. We didn’t need a bridle or rope. We just tapped him on the side of the neck with a switch to tell him where to go. I jumped on and he trotted down the lane. Larry was already across the highway and in the lower field but we would catch up with him now.

The grass in the lower field was knee high. The cows were not allowed in this field until we cut hay. Dad would be a little upset with Brownie being down here but we could tell him that we were just helping to fatten him up. 

When we got to the riverbank we slid off and Brownie ran to middle of field, bucking with joy.  The sand on the riverbank was warm from the morning sun. The river was probably still cold. Larry was already in the swimming hole. He had crossed the river and was ready to dive off the old log on the far bank. I was not supposed to go over to that log but with just us boys here today, I thought I would swim over to it.

The water was really cold. It took a slow walk to get into it. I swam a little up and back. I think I will wait until it is warmer before I swim across. A couple of times up and back was enough for me.  I got out and laid down in the warm sand. It wasn’t long and everyone was ready to go back to the house.

“You go get Brownie while I dry off,” Gary said.

I ran up the riverbank. Brownie was clear across the field with his head buried in the grass. I made my best attempt and out came a weak little whistle. Brownie raised his head and looked. He had heard my whistle. Here he came on the run. This was going to be a good ride home. He came to a stop in front of me. I nuzzled up to his belly for a little warmth. I would need some help getting on him here in the field. Pretty soon Gary came up and jumped up on him with no problem.  I jumped and Larry gave me a little boost and I was on also.

Brownie trotted toward the gate. His trot was a little rough, not like a horse, but we were used to it and had to no problem staying on his back. He stopped at the highway and waited for our heels to tell him to go. He gave a long look back to the lower field as he started up the lane toward the house.

We rode Brownie everyday that summer. He enjoyed the rides, we covered the hill on Brownie and went to river on all the good days. When we had company everyone wanted to see how well he was trained. As the summer worn on, I was able to get myself onto his back in the middle of the field. He was a better companion than a dog.

But fall came, and the second fall of all good steers would be their last. The day for Brownie’s slaughter finally came. We slaughtered on the farm. It was a common event that we were used to watching. We generally helped where we could. The steer was shot in the head and hung in the machine shed. He was gutted and skinned there. I had helped in this part in the past but today I waited in the house. Brownie was different than the other steers. After he was skinned and gutted, they would split his carcass with handsaw. Then cut him into quarters. The quarters were carried over and hung from the large cherry tree in the back yard. It would hang there in the cold fall air until the weekend when Uncle Ern would come and cut him up. Uncle Ern was an old man now but he had been a meat cutter in his younger days. He knew just how to do it.

It was hard to see Brownie hanging there in the back yard every day. In farm families, life revolves around the kitchen and the back yard. We never used the front door, and the front yard was seldom used. Finally Saturday came and with a lot of help for Uncle Ern, Brownie was in the freezer in a short time.

Dinnertime that winter became a challenge. With every meal, I would fiddle with the meat on my plate. I knew it was Brownie and I knew I had to eat it. It proved to be long, hard winter.

“Is this Brownie?” I would ask, almost every meal.

“Yes, this is Brownie,” was always the answer. “Now eat your dinner.”

“This meat is tough,” I would say.

Dad would answer, “It would be a damn sight tougher if you didn’t have it.”

Old Three Toes

D. E. Larsen, DVM

When I was growing up in Coos County one rarely encountered a Coyote, except on the high ridges. We didn’t think much about it at the time. That was just the way it was. I remember the first coyote I saw, on the top of Sugarloaf Mountain, on a cold morning Jeep ride with Uncle Robert.

    Twenty years later coyotes had moved into the valleys and were heard regularly and encountered with little effort if hunting them. They had become a significant problem to sheep ranchers, and an occasional brave one would come close enough to the barnyard to snatch a chicken.

    My Uncle Duke’s explanation for the change was probably the most accurate. I didn’t have a full understanding at the time but would later come to appreciate his wisdom.  In my younger years, 1940s and early 1950s, all the creeks in the area were full of spawning salmon and steelhead in the fall and winter. Dead, spawned out, fish were present on the riverbanks and all the creek banks. Later in the 1950s and 1960s, commercial fishing for salmon moved from the steams to the ocean.  Spawning fish numbers decreased and dead fish were only occasionally encountered on most streams.

    Duke’s opinion was that when the streams were chuck full of fish the coyotes would have easy access to salmon and would die from the disease. The only viable populations thus existed on the high ridges far removed from the spawning streams.

    Salmon Disease (or Poisoning) is a complex disease of all canines. It occurs approximately 7 days after a dog (or coyote) consumes infected raw salmon, trout or steelhead. The fish carry a larva of an intestinal fluke. The fluke causes only mild disease and can infect a number of species, but the fluke also carries a rickettsia. It is this rickettsia that makes all canines ill and is the cause of Salmon Disease.

    Salmon Disease is treatable if it is caught in time. Ninety percent of dogs (and coyotes) will die within 7 – 10 of becoming sick if they are not treated. Survivors may be immune for long periods if not for a lifetime although there are exceptions to this immunity.

    I was on a farm call, talking with Dick Rice. Dick owned a ranch on the Calapooia River. His ranch was one of the early pioneer ranches in the area. 

“Doc, I have been having a heck of a problem with coyotes the last couple of years,” Dick said. “It seems to be the same coyotes most of the time. He has only three toes on one foot.   He catches any lamb left out of the barn overnight. Can’t trap him, he is too wise.”

  Dick was at his wits end on how to deal with this bandit.  I related my Uncle Duke’s opinion on the shift of the coyote population into the Western Valleys. He listened with interest but just seemed to take it in as a story. I finished with the calf we were treating, loaded up and returned to the clinic. 

    I never gave the conversation much thought after that until I bumped into Dick outside of Thriftway one afternoon. Dick had hurried to catch up to me in the parking lot. It was apparent that he wanted to talk.

    “Hi Doc, how have you been?” he said, a little out of breath.  “I have wanted to talk to you about that Old Three Toes.”

    “Aw, yes, I remember you talking about him,” I replied.

    “You know, I got thinking about the story you told about Salmon Poisoning. One night after work, I stopped in here and bought a hunk of salmon tail. I have an old burn pit and garbage pile on the far side of the pasture behind the house. I took that salmon out there and put it on the edge of that pile.  It was gone the next morning.” 

    “And Doc, that was a couple of months ago. I have had no more coyote problems, and Old Three Toes is gone. I have not seen his tracks anywhere. Can’t thank you enough for that story.” 

    “I’m glad it helped you, Dick. You can thank the observation skills of an old farmer for the information. I am not sure that I would have ever put that information together to come up with that conclusion,” I replied.

Photo by DAVID NIETO on Unsplash