A Calf Named Trouble

by Amanda L.

Andi Carter gasped. What was that sound? She was riding Taffy towards her special place. Cory was following her at a short distance, busy staring up at a circling hawk. But the strange sound made Andi slide to a stop. In all her thirteen years, she hadn’t heard a sound quite like it. Her eyes studied the familiar ground before her. Nothing.

“That was odd, Taffy. Am I just imagining things?” she murmured to her horse. “I’m so sure I heard…wait! There it is again!” Studying the ground before her carefully, she urged Taffy into a trot.

“Hey Andi, where are you going?” Cory’s eyes came around from studying the sky.

“I thought I heard a strange sound.”

“You’re crazy! I didn’t hear anything!” he snickered.

“But…I heard it twice. Listen,” they both paused, straining their ears.

Then, the sound came again, only louder this time. It was a pitiful sound, almost a bawl.

Suddenly, something small and black burst from the trees. Taffy jerked back, as surprised as Andi herself. Cory reined in his skittering horse.  

“Moo!” the little animal cried plaintively.

“Oh! A little calf!” Andi exclaimed.

As the surprise wore off, Andi dismounted and moved slowly toward the bawling calf. Cory came up behind her, his hands in his pockets.  

“How’d you get here, little fella?” She asked, quietly approaching it.

He wobbled backwards, watching her warily. He let out another heart-wrenching cry. Wide brown eyes gazed at her from beneath long lashes. He was all black except for a single zigzag of white on the tip of his nose. Andi didn’t approach any closer, seeing the fright in his liquid eyes.

“You poor thing! You can’t be more than a few days old. I wonder where your mama is. Let’s look for his mama, Cory.”

They searched all over the woods in the surrounding area, but saw neither hide nor hair of another cow.

“Well little guy, it looks like you’re all alone,” she told him. “What are you doing way out here anyway? The last time they grazed the cattle here was…I don’t even remember. I don’t know what I’m going to do with you. Guess you’re hungry, huh?”

His woeful bawl was the only answer she got.

“I wonder how long this poor calf has been out here. He’s not very old,” Cory murmured. He kept his voice low so he wouldn’t scare the little animal. “You should probably take him home with you. He looks half-starved.”

“I guess so. You think Chad’ll let me feed him? Maybe we can find a mama cow to nurse him or something.”

“Sure! But first we’ve got to get him home. I’ll help you,” Cory replied. He glanced up at the sun, shading his eyes with his hand. He let out a groan.

“Uh-oh. I was supposed to be home an hour ago to help with chores. I’ve got to go, Andi. I’m sorry that I can’t help you.” He mounted up again. “I hope everything goes well. It shouldn’t be too hard for you to get him back home.”

Cory hurried away, leaving her alone with the calf.   

“Hello little guy. You’re going to come home with me. I can feed you, and Chad will know what to do with you after that.” She tiptoed closer to him, whispering soothing words.

The calf, tired out from mooing, allowed her to pick him up with only a few weak kicks of protest. She strained under his weight, young though he was. She shoved him up and onto Taffy as gently as she could, placing him in front of the saddle.

Then the struggle began.

Maybe the calf had been saving his strength when he let her pick him up, or maybe he had been too surprised to move. Whatever the case, he now suddenly became a whirlwind of energy. Andi started to mount up, but two tiny hooves launched toward her face. She jumped back just in time. The calf opened his mouth and let out a tiny squeak as though he was laughing at her.

Andi groaned. “What have I got myself into?”

She stood there staring at the wildly struggling calf. Taffy shifted nervously under the squirming load and turned to show him the whites of her eyes. In return, he stopped wiggling and stared back at Taffy. Andi seized that moment to mount up.

The calf’s head spun around. He gave a violent jerk and began to slide off Taffy.

“Oh no!” Andi exclaimed, reaching out to grab him. Snatching him by the back legs, she barely caught him in time. She struggled to pull him back aboard. His whole body was wriggling, and to make matters worse, Taffy began to prance in place, annoyed by the strange weight on her back.

“C’mon buddy, back on board,” she grunted, pulling on his back legs with all her might. For just an instant, he stopped writhing. It was just long enough for her to get him back in place.

“Whew, that’s better. Now let’s get moving before he starts wiggling again. Giddy up, Taffy.”

Taffy responded by eagerly breaking into a canter, wanting the awkward weight off her back as soon as possible. The calf was jolted first from one side to the other and back again.

“Whoa Taffy!” Andi hollered, grappling to catch the calf before he disappeared over the other side of the saddle. She swiped at the beads of sweat on her forehead. She’d seen some ranch hands carry calves in their saddles before, but she hadn’t realized how hard it was!

She nudged Taffy into a careful trot. This time, she gripped the baby cow tightly around the neck with one hand and held the reins with the other.

Letting out a frustrated cry at her tight hold, the little animal squirmed all the more. But Andi held on determinedly. Halfway back, the arm that holding the calf felt like it was on fire. He was still struggling! She gritted her teeth and renewed her grasp.

“You know, I think you need a name, little fellow. How about…Scamp? Or Wiggler? Nope. I’ve got it. How about Trouble?” she grinned through her gritted teeth. “I think that fits you just fine, Trouble.”

Trouble paused for a second as though contemplating the name. He began nuzzling fingers of her right hand, which was holding the reins. Andi smiled and tickled his wet nose. He licked her finger with his rough little tongue.

“Aww. You’re kinda cute.” Her smile widened.

A moment later, his mouth closed around one of her fingers, and he bit down, hard.

“Ouch!” Andi yelped. She yanked her hand back and studied the red mark on it. Taffy’s ears circled back in concern.

“I think I’ll be pretty glad to see the home stretch, you tiny chunk of trouble.”  

 Finally, at long last, she spotted outbuildings of her home. “Whew! Am I ever glad we made it. I don’t think my arm was going to last much longer.”

When she dismounted near the barn, there was no one around. “The hands must all be out moving the stock. I was hoping someone would help me. What do I do now, Trouble? I suppose the first thing I should do is get you off Taffy.”

She tugged the thrashing animal off and placed him gently on the ground. “Now don’t you go running off,” she warned. But once he was set back down onto solid ground, all of the fight seemed to go out of him. He stood there, trembling. He emitted a weak moo and looked up at her beseechingly.

“Are you hungry? I wish there was a heifer around here. You need your mama’s milk. Where is she anyway? I guess you two got separated somehow. Well, maybe I’ll see if I can rustle up some milk for you.”

Cook was not there when she went for the milk, but she knew where it was stored. She found an old baby bottle and filled it carefully. Then she came back outside to where Trouble was waiting for her.

“Here you go, Trouble. You’ll like this.”

She leaned down, holding the bottle out to him. He looked at her in confusion, then latched on to one of her fingers instead of the bottle.

“Oww! That was my finger, Trouble! You’re supposed to drink from the bottle. That really hurt.”

He looked up at her with wide brown eyes. The soft lashes flicked once in puzzlement.

“All right, I forgive you. But you’ve got to take some milk before you starve.”

After a few more tries, Trouble seemed to get the idea, and he latched onto the correct part of the bottle. As the cool liquid ran down his throat, he grew more and more eager. He leaned into the bottle, pushing hard against Andi.

“Careful there, Trouble,” she warned, taking a step backward.

Each of his sucks grew louder, and each of his thrusts toward the bottle, harder. And then he butted so hard that he knocked the bottle out of her hand. It rolled away through the dust. Andi pounced on it, praying that it wouldn’t be cracked. She examined it closely. The top of the bottle had been knocked loose, but once she fitted it back on, it was fine.

“Now Trouble, you need to stop living up to your name! Suck gently.” Trouble let out a moo that seemed to say that he understood. It sounded so much like he was trying to talk that Andi giggled. “Alright, let’s try again.”

She sat down next to him and put an arm around him. “Gently,” she stressed, offering the milk to him again.

Trouble had been growing impatient, even in the short time it had taken her to sit down beside him.

When the bottle was offered to him again, he let out a burst of excitement in a strong thrust toward it.

Things happened quickly. All of a sudden, the lid was flying off the bottle and pitching into the air. The contents of the bottle gushed out, dumping all over Andi and Trouble! Andi gasped as the cold milk seeped through her overalls and into her shirt.

“Oh no Trouble! Look what you’ve done! What will mother say?” she groaned.

Trouble gazed at her in confusion, and then looked sorrowfully at the milk, which was soaking into the dusty ground. His big eyes blinked sadly.

Andi swallowed the rebuke she had been about to give him. “I’m sorry Trouble. Guess I should have been more careful.” She picked up the fragments of the bottle. “Looks like you’re not going to be getting any more milk. Maybe I should put you in the pen while I go clean up. Maybe then I can ask someone what do to with you.”

She put him in the closest round pen and turned back towards the house. She looked down at her ruined overalls. The milk was already starting to dry in a sticky mess.

As she turned the corner of the barn sharply, she ran smack-dab into someone. She looked up. It was her brother, Chad.     

“Andi, what’s happened to you?” Chad frowned, studying the splatter of milk that was still dribbling down her overalls.

She grimaced at the sight of his scowl. She began to talk quickly. “Well, I found a lone calf, and I brought him back here because I couldn’t find his mama. He looked really hungry, so I tried to feed him.”

“You found a calf? Maybe that’s her calf!” Relief came into his eyes.

“What? Whose?”

“Oh, there’s this crazy heifer. We moved the cattle a few days back, and she kept getting away. Wildest thing you ever saw. She’s given us all kinds of trouble before, but never that much. She was so crazed that she was butting at the horses. She nearly spooked the whole herd,”

Chad paused and scratched his neck. “We couldn’t figure it out. Once we’d put the cattle out to pasture, the crazy old hag followed us home! She caused such an uproar, charging through the yard like she did, that she became famous around here. I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it! We even gave the nag a little nickname. We called her Trouble. It’s a fitting name I must say. Anyway, I finally roped her and put in her in a nearby fenced pasture. Trouble’s been pacing every day along the fence. From the amount of milk she’s producing, I thought she probably had lost a calf in the confusion of the move.”

Andi barely contained her laughter. “They named his mama Trouble, huh? Now why does that not surprise me?”

“What?” Chad turned back to her from studying the distant pasture.

“Oh, nothing,” she murmured, biting her lip to keep from cracking a huge smile.

“So where’s this calf you were trying to feed?”   

“Oh, he’s over…” she pointed toward the pen, then paused. There Trouble stood, head trapped between the rails of the enclosure. He bellowed miserably. 

Andi couldn’t help but let a tiny grin escape. “Yep, there’s Trouble, right over there.”