D. E. Larsen, DVM

I am unsure of the year, but I think it was 1954. I do remember an early spring and a bumper crop of kittens in the barn. We were living at Broadbent, and we milked a small herd of dairy cows. 

One of my jobs was taking care of the barn cats. They got pretty much all the milk they could drink, and a few cups of dry food. The rest of their ration came from the mice in the haymow.

My self imposed responsibility was to keep track of all the new kittens in the barn. Some of the mother cats were pretty good at hiding their litters and it would take considerable detective work to find all of them.

That year we had twenty-seven kittens born to six mother cats. The largest litter was eight kittens, and the smallest litter (and the last one found) was three. With six mother cats and just about an equal number of young tom cats, how were we going the handle twenty-seven more cats in the barn.

When I found the last litter of three kittens, they were a little older than the rest and the mother cat had kept them well hidden. The little black and white kitten was wild and hissed and scratched when I tried to touch him.

He quickly became my favorite, and with four white feet, I named him socks. After playing with him at every milking, he tamed down quickly. But it was obvious who ruled the litter.

The looming population boom continued to worry me. Finally, I had to discuss things with Dad.

“What are we going to do with all these kittens?” I asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” Dad said. “Nature takes of things most of the time.”

That didn’t mean much to me at the time. What did nature have to do with a bunch of kittens.

Everything went along fine for another week. Socks even seemed to look forward to my visit to their little nest that I would pass when I carried the grain rations to the cows who were being milked. I would stop and pet the kittens when I had a free minute.

Then one afternoon, the nest was empty. The mother cat never came to the milk bowl for the evening meal. I searched the barn and the haymow everywhere. The litter was just gone.

At the dinner table that evening, Mom could see that I was upset.

“What is the matter, David?” Mom asked.

“That last litter that I found is gone, the one with that black and white kitten that I named Socks,” I replied. “I’ve looked everywhere. I can’t find them and the mother cat didn’t come to the milk bowl tonight.”

“It is probably okay,” Mom said. “Mother cats often take their kittens out to teach them to hunt. She will be back in a couple of weeks.”

That seemed reasonable, but I continued to search the deep recesses ins the barn every evening. When Saturday came, I climbed the hill behind the barn, hoping find the litter. But just as Dad had said, it was a waste of time.

And then the nature thing happened! When I got to the barn after school on Monday. I had some time to look for hiding spots again. When I came across the large litter of eight kittens, four of them were dead. The others were nearly moving. They looked like they would be dead by morning. The mother can was distressed. I removed the dead kittens and showed them to Dad.

“Throw them out in the manure pile,” Dad said. “For them to die that quickly, it is probably Distemper. We will be lucky if any of them live.”

Over the next couple of days, more kittens found the grave in the manure pile. By Thursday evening, every single kitten in the barn was dead.

“That’s what I was talking about,” Dad said. “When there are too many kittens, the ole distemper virus comes along, and not too many survive.”

“None survived,” I said. “Not a single one.”

“Well, maybe your favorite kitten, who is out hunting, maybe they got lucky,” Dad said. “Maybe his mother knew the barn was not safe with so many kittens.”

That was an interesting thought, did she take the kittens out teach them to hunt, or did she know that the epidemic was coming?

It was almost a full two weeks later when I noticed Socks’ mother at the milk bowl following the evening milking. I ran down to their old nesting area, and sure enough, there were three healthy kittens waiting for attention.

Those three kittens were the sole survivors of the distemper epidemic. Was it just the luck of timing the hunt or did the mother know it was coming?

Socks grew into a large tomcat. It didn’t take long and he was the dominant cat in the barn. All the other cats would move out of his way when he approached the milk bowl or food dish.

In the spring of 1958, we moved back to Catching Creek. To a larger farm, an older barn and bigger herd of dairy cows. The cats all moved with us, and everyone stuck around. The familiar milk bowl was a strong drawing card.

This old barn had a lot of old chopped hay in the haymow. Rather the emptying it out, we just stacked the baled hay on this thin layer of chopped hay. The chopped hay was alive with mice.

On lazy afternoons, I would take Socks to the haymow and use a pitchfork to scatter the chopped hay. Mice would run in very direction. Socks would catch three of four at a time. One under each paw and one in his mouth.

One one of those afternoons, both me and socks laid in the hay after a mouse catching session. Without thinking about the consequences, I wiggled finger under the  chopped. Socks, who was almost asleep, immediately pounced on the finger. 

I learned what the mouse have felt like as his claws secured my finger. It took a moment to calm Socks and extract my bruised and scratched finger from his grip. We didn’t do that again.

Barn cats didn’t have the luxury of veterinary care in those days. And tom cats were not known to be long lived. Socks maintained is position at the top of higher archery for quite a few years. You could tell that he was getting older because he stated to have more battle wounds. The younger tomcats were starting to replace the old man.

It was the spring of 1967. I was in the Army in South Korea at the time when I got the letter from Mom that Socks had died. I was thirteen, a very good lifespan for a tomcat in the 1960s. When I started practicing in 1975, I never saw a male cat over fifteen, and those older males were all neutered.

I never heard of Socks’ final resting place, but my guess is it was the manure pile. He finally joined all those other kittens from 1954.

Photo Credit: apertur 2.8 on Pexels

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Sandy was standing at the front counter when I returned from a farm call. I was hoping to get lunch before the afternoon appointments started in the clinic. She looked like she had something to say. I would guess that my lunch idea was going to be shoved onto the back burner.

“Charlie called,” Sandy said as soon as I stepped through the door. “He has his new Angus bull caught and would like you to put a ring in his nose. I told him the only open time you had today was over lunch. He said, ‘That was alright, he really needed lunch, and you looked like you could afford to miss a meal or two.’”

“I don’t know if I have a ring,” I said. 

“Ruth already looked,” Sandy said. “You have a large ring, and she laid everything out before she went to lunch.”

I gathered everything and verified that I had all the necessary items. I headed out to Charlie’s place on Crawfordsville Drive.

Charlie was waiting at the corral when I pulled into his barnyard. He had the bull in the crowding alley. This was a big bull. It looked like it weighed close to a ton.

“Charlie, I don’t think this guy is going to fit into your chute,” I said as I shook his hand.

“I was thinking the same thing,” Charlie said. “What do you think we should do?”

“Even if we get him into the chute, his neck is too big, we won’t be able to close the head gate,” I said. “If we can get a halter on him, we can do this right there in the alley.”

“He is pretty gentle,” Charlie said. “I think he was probably a show animal in his younger days. Just a moment, I have a big rope halter in the barn. I’ll grab the ring I bought. Maybe you can show how the thing works. I can’t quite figure it out.”

“That will help us put a halter on him,” I said. “But you need to remember, the bull that is considered gentle is the most dangerous.”

“Why do you say that?” Charlie asked.

“They are the ones that you don’t expect to be a problem,” I said. “You let your guard down. You need to respect all bulls as if they can kill you. Sort of like all guns are handled as if they are loaded.”

We slipped the halter on the bull with no problem. Then I pulled his nose up high and tied the halter short, on the strongest post along the alley.

“How do you get this ring in the nose?” Charlie asked.

“You removed this little screw,” I said as I removed the screw and opened the ring on its hinge. “You see, this sharp end is made to just shove through the nasal septum, but I use a surgical trocar to make it easier. That and some lidocaine for local anesthesia.”

“I was wondering if it was going to hurt,” Charlie said.

“The lidocaine stings a bit, but if we did this ring without the anesthesia, we would find out how strong that was,” I said as I drew up a syringe full of lidocaine.

“That looks like a bunch,” Charlie said.

“I don’t want to end up with a broken arm,” I said.

The bull complained a bit when I injected the lidocaine into his nasal septum. But he quieted quickly as it took effect.

“We will give it a minute or two, just to make sure things are good and numb,” I said.

“I hear stories of bulls tearing these rings out,” Charlie said. “Does that really happen?”

“I’ve heard those stories,” I said. “But I have never seen it happen. I grew up around Jersey bulls. They are reputed to be some of the meanest of our bulls. I’m not sure if that’s true or if it was said to make sure the kids get close to them. I did see a couple of bulls become belligerent when I was young. But they could still be handled with that ring in their nose.”

I stuck the bull’s nasal septum with the point of the trocar, and there was no response. With a quick shove, I pushed the sleeved trocar through the septum. Then I pulled the trocar out, leaving the sleeve in place.

At that point, it was a simple chore to fit the open nose ring into the end of the trocar sleeve and retract the sleeve, leaving the nose ring in the nose. I closed the ring and replaced the screw holding it closed.

“There you go,” I said as I untied the halter and pulled it off.

“What about that bleeding?” Charlie asked.

“It will stop shortly,” I said. “All bleeding stops, eventually. Besides, it’s a long way from his heart.”

Charlie smiled, not quite sure whether I was trying to be funny or not. We backed the bull out of the alley so he wouldn’t have to try to fit through the chute. He licked the blood and snorted a bit as he shook his head, not quite sure of his new jewelry.

Photo Credit: Mark Stebnicki on Pexels

Epilogue:

Today I noticed two young ladies, both in their early twenties, with nose rings. It is beyond me to understand why they would do such a thing to themselves.

My guess is they feel it makes them feel more attractive. But to whom, or to what?

When I was a young man, if a guy was under the spell of a young lady, he was often said to be led around by a ring in his nose. That was a metaphor, equating a situation to a bull. There were other terms, some not so nice. Pussy whipped for one.

My grandfather, who grew up in a time when there was no treatment for a dog with Salmon Poisoning, would say that “he was salmoned on her.” The thought of a girl with a ring in her nose did not exist.

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Growing up on a dairy farm, I have always worked. At least from age four, when we moved onto the farm at Broadbent. I learned early that the cows and other animals at the barn were taken care of before we went to dinner.

Those were every day events. Life revolved around the barn and the kitchen. And for the most part, animals came first. Vacations were mostly non-existent, and a family trip for a pot luck lunch at the beach happened only on rare occasions.

Women always complained that if there was extra money it went into the barn before the house. But extra money didn’t happen often. We were probably poor most of my early years, but we didn’t know it. There were always others who were worse off. I learned early that the nickels and dimes I carried in my pocket from picking up bottles on the way to town, were easily shared with others for penny candy from the store as we waited for the school bus.

We peeled chitum for money to spend at the fair. I was twelve when I started getting paid for work hauling hay and filling silo. If I could put fifty dollars in the bank for a summers work, I considered myself rich beyond my dreams.

When I was seventeen, I started working at the cheese factory in Myrtle Point. I made the best wage in town available for someone my age. But the week was a forty-eight hour week with plenty of overtime. My social life suffered but I could buy a car and put money in the bank for college.

I continued to work at the cheese factory, part time while school was in session and full time in the summers. I could pay for a year of college with no problem.

When I dropped out of school to work full time in the spring of 1965, it only took a couple of weeks for the Selective Service People to send me my greetings letter.

The Army happened. It was a good thing for me. I enlisted to try to maintain some control over my fate. My test scores were high and I qualified for the Army Security Agency.

I made the decision when I entered the Army that I might not be the biggest, the smartest, or the fastest of everyone, but nobody was going to work harder than me. That philosophy served me well.

There was basic training at Fort Ord. Then nearly a year a Fort Devens Massachusetts. When I finished schooling, I was sent to South Korea for a year. Far better than Vietnam.

The work load in Korea was rigorous. I often worked twelve hour days and a five day week was unheard of. There was at least one episode of a forty-eight hour shift.

When I left Korea, I was assigned to West Germany. I had been in the Army for a little over two years. The Army gave a person thirty days leave for every year of service. I had used two weeks after basic training. My mistake was taking the full forty=five days between Korea and Germany.

My thought was, forty-five days with nothing but free time. As it turned out, the folks had sold most of their cows, so there wasn’t much work to do around the place. I spent a couple of days helping Dad finish building a garage. Then I slipped into a pattern of sleeping till noon, eating Mom’s cooking, and then going to town to drink beer and trying to stay out of trouble. 

It was sort of like fattening a steer for market. I didn’t notice much, until it was time to go back to the Army.

When I was scheduled to return to duty, I had to wear my uniform. In those years, servicemen and women could fly standby for half price. But you had to wear your uniform.

When I had left Korea, I was probably in the best shape of my life. Well muscled and weighing 175 pounds. I hadn’t noticed any change in myself during my time at home, but then I had to put on my uniform.

The first problem was sucking my gut in enough so I could button the top button of my pants. Then it was impossible to button the top button of my shirt. I could hide that with my tie. Then I put on my jacket. Again, I struggled to get it buttoned.

I couldn’t breathe. The jacket stretched across my belly and looked like it was going to pop each button. I undid the button and I was comfortable, but how as I going to travel to Europe looking like a slob without getting called to the carpet by some second lieutenant along the way.

Of course, I had no choice. I released the top button on my pants and decided to go in a relaxed mode. 

As it turned out, I had no problem. I was most worried in the Chicago airport where I had to change planes and had quite a walk through the airport. Once I got to Fort Dix, I was able to change into my fatigues. Then were too small also, but it was not as obvious as my dress greens.

I was lucky when I got Germany. Having come from Korea, I was able to change out my entire uniform at no cost. I also found a scale. I weighed 195 pounds. As things go, my 175 frame was lost forever.

Those forty-days were the only time in my life that I had more than ten day without any work to do. The twenty extra pounds are still with me. The timing of my arrival in Germany proved very advantageous, but that is another story. But the weight gain was a great mistake.