A couple weeks back the Jersey cow set one of her hind hooves on top of one of my boots while I milked her. A most gentle creature, she meant no harm, but the weight of a full grown cow gets your attention and I jerked the offending boot out from under. No harm done, just a wee flash of adrenaline. Last week our Black Baldie bull, who weighs a scant ton, shifted suddenly while having ticks pinched from his hide. One of his huge hooves made a temporary home on the top of a shoe worn by she-who-is-usually-obeyed. Again, no lasting injury, only the reminder that cattle, no matter how docile carry significantly more mass than we do.
I've been lucky with cattle, up until jinxing myself now, having never been kicked, though countless times jostled and shoved against corral rails. When I was scarcely more than a toddler my sister's horse used to allow me to crawl beneath its belly and play games in the dust or mud with nary a flinch on the horse's part.
All in all, dating back to beloved creatures like Old Jack the horse, whose life straddled the 19th and 20th centuries, the Macdonalds have been blessed with domesticated livestock and pets of the most tolerant sort. As with everything there have been exceptions. An early March, 1926, note in the Mendocino newsprint stated that a Mrs. Korpela who was staying with friends near the McKay School (this second McKay School was located approximately 4.25 miles east of Highway One on what is now called the Littleriver Airport Road, but then would have been referred to as the prairie road), “went down to the Macdonald [once in awhile Beacon editor Auggie Heeser spelled our surname correctly] place but found no one at home. While there she was severely bitten on the arm by a dog. Everyone with a car seemed to be gone and as the [telephone] line was down it was some time before help could be gotten or the doctor called.”
Nowadays an uninvited guest would have to pass through two closed gates, one of which is padlocked, just to get into our yard. If rains were pouring, said visitor would likely have to run a gauntlet of cattle, since those critters are prone to travel uphill when precipitation hits their normal bottom land grazing pasture. As yet there has been no recorded trampling of humans by cow, bull, oxen or steer here.
Less than a month after Mrs. Korpela's ill fated venture down to the Macdonald ranch the coast paper told the following bovine tale: “Thursday evening Claire Patton was driving a cow across the Big river bridge and had reached the far end of the bridge. Alvin Reynolds came along down the hill at a lively rate and a collision occurred in which the cow came off second best, the car striking her in the head and killing her almost instantly. As the cow was a good milker, the accident means quite a loss to Mr. Patton.”
That cow undoubtedly supplied the Pattons with not only milk but cheese, butter, cream, and possibly yogurt, perhaps some kefir as well. All of those products stem from our Jersey milker, so one can imagine the day to day practical and economic loss, not to mention the fact that one gets somewhat attached to gentle bulls and oxen let alone good milkers.
Twenty years to the week prior to the untimely demise of Claire Patton's cow the same locale bore witness to a midnight occurrence: George Ottoson and Rose Lilley were returning from a play in Fort Bragg in a buggy. On the Big River Bridge their valuable horse stepped on a fallen live wire. The horse dropped to the deck of the bridge. The couple climbed out the rear of the buggy and made their way into Mendocino. Auggie Heeser recounted events from hereon, “Electrician Stanley went down and after shutting off the current at the plant went over to the bridge for the purpose of putting up a lantern at the point of the broken wires. He found the horse apparently dead, but the carcass was warm so he determined to do a little work at resuscitation. Holding one nostril closed Stanley blew into the other with all his might and with his knee pressed against the horse's side, thus establishing artificial respiration. He continued the process for almost fifteen minutes with the result that he was rewarded for his labors by seeing the animal take on signs of life. In a few minutes more he had the horse on his feet greatly to the surprise of onlookers. He then brought the animal up town and told Ottoson that his “dead” horse was in the stable.”
Hopefully, horse and owner survived the massive earthquake that struck less than two weeks later.
Readers can beat a dead gorse at malcolmmacdonaldoutlawford.com
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