D. E. Larsen, DVM

It was hard to see in the night with this heavy rain. I was glad that I had put my rain pants and boots on when I left the house.  I pulled on my raincoat as I stepped out of the truck.  I was wet before I got the jacket on, the rain was drenching. I peered at a blank wall of small fir trees and brush. Ayers McElfresh had said to come to this corner of his place when he called this morning. 

Finally, I could see two shadowy figures move out from under a fir tree.  They were hunched, in heavy rain gear and wide brim hats.  Sort of looked like a scene out of a Jesse James movie.  

The phone had shocked me awake from a sound sleep, the clock said 3:00 AM. It was Ayers on the phone. Ayers McElfresh was an old logger with a small farm on Scott Mountain. He had lost an eye in the woods, and I always had trouble making eye contact with his good eye rather than his glass eye.

“Doc, I have a cow down up on the hill, she is in bad shape.  Glenn Hill and I have been looking for her all night.”  I hung up the phone and pulled myself out of bed and quickly dressed. The truck was cold at first but started to warm as I headed down the hill to the highway through Sweet Home.

The rain seemed heavier as I turned up Scott Mountain Road.  Ayers had reminded me not to come to the house. “They would meet me at the upper corner of his place.  The cow was close to that corner.”  I slowed the truck as I turned the corner, straining through the night and heavy rain to get a glimpse of Ayers.  There they were, a couple of shadowy figures moving out from under a large tree. Dressed in rain gear and both wearing wide brim hats, they looked like something out of a Jesse James movie.

I waved as I stepped around the back of the truck.  Ayers and Glenn Hill, a neighbor, both waved back.  “Bring your stuff, and we will spread the wire so you can get through the fence.”

Spreading the fence wire for me was quite an honor. My grandfather would have tanned our hides if he had seen any of us kids stretching the fence wire when we were growing up.

“This is that half Holstein cow.  I raised her from a calf.  She is about 5 or 6 years old.  Calved yesterday, we have been looking for her all night.  She rolled down the hill into a big old patch of Himalayan berry vines.  One hell of a fix, she is flat out Doc.”

I grabbed the bucket filled with supplies and headed across the ditch full of runoff and ducked through the barbed wire that Ayers and Glenn were holding apart for me.  I peered into the tunnel in the brier patch.  Ayers shined his flashlight down into the tunnel, maybe 30 feet down the hill, you could see the cow.  She was lucky her head was uphill, probably why she was still alive.

“How the hell did you find her?” I asked.

“Let me tell you, it wasn’t easy.”  “We looked all night in this damn rain, almost gave up but finally worked our way up to this corner.  Glenn is the one who noticed this hole in the brush.  I was surprised to see her down there.” 

With a deep breath, I squatted down, and sort of duck walked down the tunnel of briers to the cow.   Her head was up, allowing the rumen gas to escape.  If it were downhill, she would be dead already.  

    The rain clothes provided protection from more than constant rain.  There was minimal room, and every stray movement was met with a tangle of berry vines.  My exam was very cursory.  I had already made my diagnosis of milk fever, I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to miss something obvious.  

    The temperature was low, 98°,  her udder normal, no vaginal discharge, rectal exam shows firm dry stool.  All this was consistent with the diagnosis.  Response to treatment will be the last confirmation.

    I grasped the nostrils with the nose tongs and pulled her head back, tying the tongs to the hock with a quick release knot.  I opened a bottle of Cal Dextro2 and secured the IV set to the top.  Everything was sterile, but that was sort of joke at this point.  The rain was still heavy, but the vines caught the downpour and converted it to large heavy drops.  Mud and rain, couldn’t keep things clean.  

    I took the needle out of the autoclaved pouch and leaned against her neck to further stabilize her.  Holding the jugular vein with my left hand, needle in my right hand, held by thumb and forefinger.  I struck the jugular with the heel of my right hand twice in a rapid motion and then turned my hand and seated the needle into the vein on the third stroke.  Releasing my grip on the needle as it passed through the skin kept it from piercing through the vein.  Then I quickly threaded it down the vein.  I learned this technique when I worked in the feedlots while in school.

    Hooking the IV set to the needle, I started the infusion at a rapid rate for the first bottle.  Giving it too fast could cause a cardiac arrest (dead cow).  Seldom happened to a cow this far advanced, her blood calcium could be below 4.0. 

    I leaned back and rested a little, looked at Ayers.  He was concerned, hadn’t said a word, just held the flashlight and watched.

    “Milk fever!” I said.  “Not an uncommon condition in older dairy cows.  She would have been dead in the morning, good thing you found her.”

    “Is she going be okay?”

    “I think you will be surprised.  Might take a couple of bottles here and a little time but there is a good chance she will walk out of here.”

    When the first bottle was done, she was a little more alert but not struggling against the restraint.  I started the second bottle a little slower.  I couldn’t decide what was worse, the torrential downpour or the constant large drops.  

    By the time the second bottle was done, she was struggling against the nose tongs.  I pulled the needle out and put everything back into the bucket.  I moved around to her side and pulled the free end of the rope, this released her nose.  Her head swung around and almost knocked me down.  I was able to pull the nose tongs out of her nose.  She kicked and righted herself to her sternum.  Then in one motion, sprung to her feet and raced up the hill and out the tunnel.  Glenn who was watching from the entrance had to jump out of her way.  Ayers went flying one direction, and I went the other.  The bucket and its contents were scattered.

When I got off my back, Ayers was still unhooking himself from the briers. 

    “Damn glad I was dressed for the rain.”  He said as he gathered the light and started to give me a hand.

    I grabbed the bucket, a little bent now, and started putting things back into it.  Everything was there, except the needle.  Before me was a mire of mud, cow tracks, and footprints.  I swept my hands across the wet ground.     

    “What are you looking for? 

    “I lost the needle.  Should be here somewhere.”

    Ayers helped me look for a minute or so then looked at me with his one good eye and asked, “Is it valuable?” His eyebrow over his good eye raised up a little for emphasis.

    “No, not valuable, just not the kind of thing you don’t want to leave behind.”

    “Look Doc, it’s 3:00 in the damn morning, raining like hell.  Here we are in the middle of large brier patch at the far corner of my place.  There isn’t going to be anybody in here for the next 100 years.  Just leave it.”

    Made sense to me, besides I had a full day ahead of me.  So I left the needle.  We crawled up the tunnel and into the drenching rain.  It felt good to stand up straight again.

    Glenn was still standing there, looking somewhat like a drowned rat.  “That was some show.  What did you give her Doc?  I might need some of that stuff.” 

    I crawled back through the fence and stuffed things into the truck.  I will have a chore cleaning things up in the morning.  I peeled my raincoat off, just about as wet inside as outside.  

    I pulled myself into the truck and shut the door.  Dry at last.  Will be a short night tonight, I thought as I started up the hill looking for a spot to turn around.

The sun was hot, dust stuck to the back of your throat.  It was one of those August days in the Willamette. Valley that made one wish Fall would come early.  I leaned over the low gate to get a better look at the horn on the old ram, trying not to disrupt his interest in the alfalfa in the feed rack.  Every movement stirred up more dust.

    Flies were gathered around an ugly spot on the side of his head where the tip of his horn was buried into the skin.  A full curl plus some, this old ram would be a trophy in the wild. 

    Ayers had called worried about his ram.  Arthritic enough that he probably had problems getting around to service the ewes. It was late in the day before we had been able to work him in.  The good part was I could go home after this, the sad part was it was the hottest time of the day.

      Ayers had been a little embarrassed about having me look at the old guy. 

“He probably ain’t worth the cost of the call, poor old guy probably should just put him out of his misery,”  Ayers had said when called.

    Ayers was an old logger who ran a few sheep and cows on a forty-acre ranch out in Liberty.  He had lost one eye when a broken cable had recoiled and struck him on the right side of his head.  Probably lucky that it didn’t take his head off.  Ayers was a big raw bone Scotsman, well over 6 feet with broad shoulder and a sturdy frame.  His calloused hands and course complexion told of many years of hard work and exposure to the elements.  He was tough as nails but had a soft heart when it came to his animals.  

    “Sure enough, the tip of that horn is buried in the skin.  We probably don’t want to take the whole horn off, that would be pretty hard on a ram this old.  I should be able just to trim the end and solve the problem for a couple of years”.

    “Couple of years?  This guy will be lucky to survive the winter.”

    We put a halter on the ram with a little struggle and snubbed his chin to the upper corner of the stall.  I retrieved a short piece of OB wire from my bag and threaded it around the tip of the horn.  Then I clamped a handle on each end.  Positioned the wire saw about one inch from the skin.  Leaning back to apply my weight to the wire I started long slow strokes to get the wire embedded.  At that point, I quickened the pace.  Smoke rose from the horn.  Makes the smell on the old dentist drill seems like nothing.  Only took a few seconds and the tip of the horn flew over my left shoulder as I fought to regain my balance.  Checking the horn where the tip had been, and there was no blood.  A good thing about the wire saw, the heat generated usually cauterized any vessels.  

I used a prep blade to shave the wool away from the wound.  A few maggots had already hatched and were scurrying to avoid the Betadine.  The horn had left hole almost to the bone.  It would do well after I cleaned the wound and applied Betadine ointment and Screw worm spray.  Long-acting Penicillin injection completed the treatment.  I released his head, removed the halter and opened the gate.  The ram looked at us like we were crazy, he returned to the alfalfa in the feed rack.

“This must be your last call? ”  Ayers asked, knowing full well that I wouldn’t have anything scheduled after 5:30 on a Friday afternoon.  He had asked to have a drink with him on each visit for the last 6 months.  I had always had the excuse of having more to do.  

“Yes, this is my last call today.”

“I have a new bottle of Pinch, best scotch that I know.  Come on up the house and have a drink.  You can wash up there.”

“Sure, I’ll put things away and pull the truck up there.”

Ayers was holding the door for me when I got there.  

“New bar of soap right there at the sink, a clean towel is hanging on the hook.”

After washing Ayers lead me to the dining room table.  His wife was sitting at the kitchen table and did not respond to us.  I knew that she was suffering from Alzheimer’s.  Her care had really confined Ayers in recent months.  Ayers grabbed a couple of large drinking glasses as we entered the dining room.  New bottle of Pinch was on the table.  I think he had planned this visit.  

“Just a moment, I have a new bottle of Soda, don’t want to ruin good scotch with an old bottle of Soda.”  

Ayers returned from the kitchen with ice and a new bottle of Schweppes Club Soda.  He added a few ice cubes to each glass.  Opened the Pinch and poured first 2 fingers then 3 into each glass.  Filled the glasses with Soda and sat down with a noticeable sigh.  

“Love this stuff, about the only thing I have anymore.  She doesn’t remember anything now,” nodding his head toward his wife, “makes things pretty tough.”

I wasn’t quite ready for a counseling session and never was very good at small talk.  Taking a sip of the drink, I was a little surprised that it was pretty good.  I hadn’t drunk scotch since early in my army days at Fort Devens.  This was maybe going to be easier than I thought.

“Must be difficult, do you have anybody to help?”

“Lady comes in the mornings, helps to get her up and through the bathroom and shower.  Fixes breakfast and cleans the house a little.  When she leaves she just sits there in the kitchen until bedtime.”

We continued to talk, mostly about Ayers’ early days in the woods before he lost his eye, then about the developing cataract in his only remaining eye.  Cataract surgery was advanced enough that most people when through it without a thought or worry.  It would be different if you only had one eye.  That low complication rate doesn’t mean much if you are the one with the complication.

     “Do you remember that night that you lost that needle up in that brier patch 4 or 5 years ago??”

“Do I remember?  That was quite a night, pretty hard to forget.”

    “Well, a couple of months ago I decided to clear some brush up in that corner.  Don’t know why sure don’t need any more land.  I can’t do as much as I used to do.  I was working along, and damned if I didn’t step right on that needle!  It went through the sole of my boot, through my foot and poked out the top of my boot.  Damn that hurt!  I sat down and pulled it out, that hurt like hell too.”

    “I was a real mess for a while.  Limped around for better than a week.  I was going to go to the doctor and get a tetanus shot but started to feel better, so I forgot about that.   Must have been okay, I’m still alive.  Maybe because that was a sterile needle?’

    “I don’t know, Ayers, that needle couldn’t have been too sterile, laying in the mud and dirt for the last few years.”

    “Well, no matter now.  I was the one who wanted you to leave it so I could get back to bed.”

    Not much else to say, they don’t make them like Ayers anymore.

Photo by Kids from Pexels

D. E. Larsen, DVM

My mother was born on August 14, 1913, as Dolores Lorrene Davenport. She was born on the family farm on Catching Creek, out of Myrtle Point, Oregon. 

The fifth child in a family of ten, she learned how to work at an early age. But by today’s standards, her childhood was idyllic. There was hard work, shared by many hands, and many lessons learned that served her for a lifetime.

There was no electricity on Catching Creek until the late 1930s, and the family had a three-hole outhouse. My mother never lived in a house with indoor plumbing until 1950. They installed an indoor bathroom in their house at Broadbent that summer. She was thirty-seven years old.

She went to elementary school at Twin Oaks School. At this one-room school, her family accounted for a large portion of the attendance. Then she went on to high school in Myrtle Point.

She met my father in high school, and they were married a couple of years later. Graduating in 1932 in the depth of the depression, Mom worked at several jobs until she married Frank Larsen in September of 1934. Dad attended OSU that fall and winter before running out of money. They hitchhiked from Corvallis to Myrtle Point. Mom was pregnant with my sister by then. Some 13 months after my sister was born, my oldest brother came along.

Dad went to work in the woods, and they lived in logging camps in Coos County for a time. One shack they lived in, they purchased for forty dollars. It had a dirt floor, no water, no plumbing, no electricity. They couldn’t sell it when they were leaving, so they just left it.

In those years, one car was luxury, two cars were unheard of for most people. Once, when they lived out of Allegany on the Coos River, my sister was whittling on a door frame, dropped the knife, and it stuck in her eye. Dad was at work with the car. Mom had no phone, no car, no close neighbors, and my oldest brother was too young to run for help. Mom held my sister on her lap with a washcloth over the knife until Dad got home from work. They took my sister to the doctor then. The injury looked far worse than it was, but imagine the stress of that situation.

My second brother was born in 1941, and I followed in 1945. Shortly after I was born, we moved from the Coos River back to Catching Creek. And then, they purchased a small ranch above Broadbent in December of 1949. 

Things like a telephone and electricity were commonplace by the late 1940s. And most houses had running water by then, gravity fed from a spring on the hill in our case, both on Catching Creek and at Broadbent. The telephone hung on the wall, and you cranked the handle to contact the operator who would connect you to who you were calling. Party lines only, and that meant 10 or 12 parties on the line. Don’t plan on making a call on Saturday morning, and don’t think anything you say is private.

To make a go of it on the ranch, Dad continued to work in the woods as a Donkey Puncher. Mom milked the cows in the morning with the boys’ help, and then she did her housework. Dad would be off work in the afternoon, and he did the evening milking. Mom and the kids did all the other chores. The included changing irrigation all summer long.

A full dinner just seemed to happen, every night. Everybody was at the dinner table, and that was what you had to eat for the night. If you didn’t like something for dinner, that was fine, but there was nothing else to eat until breakfast.

With the labor of a bunch of uncles, the folks installed a bathroom in the house at Broadbent in the summer of 1950. No more late-night trips to the outhouse and no more weekly baths in the washtub. Mom was 37 years old at the time.

In 1950, my brother cut his hand badly. We had no car, and an ambulance did not exist. Mom was able to call a neighbor, and she had a car. She drove Mom and my two brothers to the doctor. Larry was in the back seat tending to Gary’s lacerated hand.

That laceration required several surgeries, most of them in Portland. Mom and Gary would catch the Greyhound Bus at two in the morning in Myrtle Point, change buses in Coos Bay and arrive in Portland about 10:00 in the morning. They would do the doctor visit, eat lunch, and maybe go to a movie before catching the afternoon bus back to Coos Bay. Dad would pick them up when they arrived at about midnight. I have never heard how they got around in Portland, from the bus to the doctor and back. I could not imagine them using a taxi.

I have no memory of eating at a restaurant as a family. A couple of times, I remember eating at a restaurant when we were traveling and visiting, but those events were rare. When my sister got married, we went to LA.  We went to a Chinese restaurant with an aunt and uncle. Even when we traveled long distances, we would eat a packed lunch in a park somewhere.

In 1958, we moved from Broadbent back to Catching Creek, where the folks leased the Lundy Place, and Dad quit the woods and milked cows only. Mom did not have to milk cows there, but she kept plenty busy with a massive garden, canning, and housekeeping. 

There was silo filling twice a year and hay hauling once or twice a year. Lunches for the crew of uncles and friends and maybe a hired hand or two were something akin to a holiday dinner. The women worked as a crew in the kitchen, similar to the crew in the fields.

I was the last to leave home, college in 1963 to 1965, where I was home and gone from time to time. Then I joined the Army in 1965. In 1967, the folks sold the dairy cows and moved back to Broadbent and ran beef cows. Dad worked at the feed store for a time, and then he tended greens at the golf course. Mom went to work at Meyers Department store in town. 

They fully retired in 1978. Dad had contracted brown lung disease from the silo and got to the point that he could no go to the barn. Mom had to do all the feeding, so they decided to sell the cows.

When they were loading the cows to go down the road, Mom started to cry. Dad asked her what was wrong.

“I wanted to keep that little heifer,” Mom said.

So, of course, they kept the heifer. And in so doing, they learned that feeding one cow is just a hard as feeding twenty cows in the winter. The following spring they sold the heifer. And Mom was without cows for the first time in her life.

My mother was loved by everyone. She was a favorite aunt, commonly called be Auntie Deacon. I think there were other names. Deacon, also used by my father and her brothers, was a name given to her by a childhood friend, Connie Felcher.

My mother seldom said a cross word. We were always instructed, “If you can’t say something good, don’t say anything at all.”

As I grew older, I could read her body language better. When she was bothered by somebody’s comments or the event of the moment, she might wring her hands. It would be rare indeed to hear her speak in unfavorable terms.

Maybe the most consistent way to get her to comment would be to say something was the mother’s fault. “The kid was bad because it was the mother’s fault.”

Then Mom would say, “That makes me so mad, for them to always blame the mother.”

Mom struggled with my father’s death. Dad had wanted to die at home. When the doctor in Eugene told him that there nothing more they do for him, he immediately said, “I want to go home.”

Mom could not allow nature to take its course with Dad. Every episode where Dad would approach death, she would call the ambulance, and it was back to the hospital. Each trip left him weaker and frailer, and it did nothing but buy a few more days or another week. Finally, Dad died in a care center.

Mom’s family was long-lived. Although, her mother had died at 84 after suffering a stroke.  Her father lived to be 94. Six of the 10 kids lived into their 90s. Mom was the longest-lived, at 98.

We had to move her into the care center in Myrtle Point for the last few years of her life because we could not find competent in-home care in the area. The last year she was home, she was in and out of the hospital with digestive issues every few weeks. The caretakers could not boil water. 

Initially, in the care center, the converted Mast Hospital, she had a room upstairs where the full nursing care was located. 

“David, I think this is the room we were in when you were born,” Mom said to me on my initial visit. In those years, birthing mothers were often kept in the hospital for an entire week or more.

Later, when a room came available, we moved Mom downstairs to the assisted living portion of the center. She was happier there, but she would have preferred to be home.

At one point, two of her sisters were in the care center with her. Lila and Audrey were both there. Of the three, Mom was the oldest, and she took personal responsibility for the care of her sisters. 

Once, she said, “I would like to escape this place, but I can’t leave Lila here by herself.”

Mom became somewhat bitter as she recognized her approaching death. She had enjoyed many years where she was the matriarch of the large extended Davenport and Larsen families. She said to me during one visit, “People are just going to have to learn to get along without me.”

“Mom,” I said. “Your example will guide many people for the rest of their lives.” I am not sure that helped her cope with her pending death much.

The care centers tend to eat through a person’s assets quickly. We were very close to the point of going to state and placing her on Medicaid. She was down to her last few dollars when she had a stroke. She was in the hospital for almost a week following that stroke and then returned to the care center in Myrtle Point, where she died a few days later. On my last visit with her in the care center, she was able to sit up and stand with assistance, but she did not acknowledge anyone. And she never spoke. 

She lived 98 years, 6 months, and 11 days. She left four kids, 13 grandchildren, and 27 great-grandchildren.

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/33947890/dolores-lorene-davenport-larsen-obituary/