WESTSIDE — Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and do the things you know will probably cause trouble. I’d about as soon have a good dose of chiggers as gather cattle in this weather. The chances of killing a couple of fat calves or overwrought cows are high and you can include me in that. The heat and humidity are sure dangerous when you try to pen cattle.

We had seen a calf that looked strangely strange when we weaned this spring. He didn’t bunk break like the others but was quiet and stayed in good shape, not great shape but pretty good.We give a shot of vitamins to those who need it and we gave him a big dose of probiotics just for caution’s sake. He has been slick and grazing until this last week and now is going down fast.

The offspring thought they might just walk the herd into the pen we set up in the corner of that pasture. We poured out grain there for five days and so we sooucked them in, almost. Oh, you know,“Soouck heifer, soouck soouck!” I knew you knew what that means.

The lazy bunch started in, the hungry bunch got there and the other ones with wide eyes and ewe necks loped around! Old Sicky stayed by himself and I figured he felt too bad to run. Wrong again! He saw the offspring coming and went to the trees on the other side of the pasture. A 600 pounder, a thin 600 pounder, can out trot a fast feller if he so desires, and Sicky desired.

We had started at daybreak, 5:15 a.m. to be exact, and it was getting hotter by the second. The lazy ones and the skittish ones were penned, all were standing around beginning to mill and wanting out. The sun was sure doing its thing drying up the dew and yours truly. I could see old Sickyway ahead of the herders once in awhile and finally the two figures walking in toward the pens. I got in the truck and drove to pick them up.

Wet to the bone and dry as dust, they chugged the water for several minutesbefore the ability to verbalize returned to either one. Then they could not say one word in a civilized way to me, their loving father! Seems it was all my fault and yet I don’t remember coming up with the idea of walking the ignorant cattle in.

Sicky was down, drawing his last breath when we got there. He did not struggle to get up and run, just laid his head down and died. That was a blessing to him and for me. I could have spent hundreds of dollars and still lost a calf.

Back to the penned cattle, two down and breathing hard, we turned them all out and started pumping hosed water over the downers. Didn’t take long for one to get up and the other one to die!

It is my opinion, and everyone has one, I would have been better off to just shoot the sick calf, sleep till 6 this morning, drink coffee in the shade and draw circles in the dust with the toe of my boot, anything but penning fat cattle! Another day, another dollar, but the offspring won’t have to spend any time at an air conditioned gym, running around a track for exercise.

Bill is a pen name used by the Gravette author of this weekly column.

Opinion, Pages 6 on 06/15/2011