The Jansens paid ten dollars and left with newly named Petunia.
“So, Dr. Gross, what happened to your boots?” Dick could barely get it out for laughing. “If you wash them in tomato juice, it will take the smell away... or so I’ve heard.”
Mumbling under my breath, I put my wet boots and socks in a plastic garbage bag and went home for lunch.
***
“You’re joking?” Rosalie giggled when I described what had happened. “You dropped the scent gland on your boot? I think I can smell it. Aren’t those the boots you bought last week?”
“Nonsense, you can’t smell the boots. I left them outside in a plastic bag. Do we have any tomato juice? Dick claims if I soak them in tomato juice it will take away the smell.”
I left the boots soaking in tomato juice while Rosalie and I ate tuna salad sandwiches. After lunch, I washed the boots again and left them outside to dry.
***
That evening I was home early, a little after seven. After dinner, I washed the dishes; Rosalie dried.
“I met Mrs. Rosenstein today,” she said.
“Who is Mrs. Rosenstein?”
“She and her husband own the jewelry store on Main.”
“Really, are you in the market for jewelry?”
“No, silly.” Rosalie punched my left arm. “Kathy told me she thought the Rosensteins are Jewish.”
“Really? So did you have a nice visit?”
“Yes, she was very nice, about our parents’ age. She told me they go to Billings for the High Holy Days.”
“Is that something you think we need to do? Is that the closest? Billings is about 275 miles from here.”
“I know. I looked it up on the map. I feel we ought to attend services, and apparently, that’s the closest. It wouldn’t feel right to me not to go at least for evening services on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Didn’t you always go?”
“Yeah, I did, even when I was in school. I usually drove from Fort Collins to Denver. My family went for both evening and morning services on Rosh Hashanah and pretty much all day on Yom Kippur.”
“Well then, don’t you think you’ll feel weird if we don’t go?”
“Probably. Did you find out when services are?”
“Yes, the eve of Rosh Hashanah is September 22; that’s a Thursday night. Yom Kippur eve is the thirtieth, Friday night.”
“OK, I’ll talk to Dr. Schultz and see if he has a problem with my being gone. It will take about six hours to drive there. I suppose services start at sundown, about six-thirty or seven, so if we left here before noon, we could get there in time. We could get a motel room for that night, change clothes, then go to services again in the morning, and drive back in the afternoon. For Yom Kippur, we could do the same thing, but we won’t get back here until very late if we stay for closing services. Will we need tickets?”
“I didn’t know if you would be willing to ask for time off, so I didn’t ask.”
“OK, I’ll talk to Dr. Schultz tomorrow and find out.”
The next day I asked Dr. Schultz if I could take the necessary time off explaining the importance of the Jewish New Year and Day of Atonement.
“I’ve heard of your ‘Row Shashana’ and ‘Yom Keeper’ but never really knew what they were all about. We had a coupla Jews in my outfit during the war, and I know it was a big deal to them. Some Jewish baseball players refuse to play on those days, like Sandy Koufax. What days will you be gone?”
“We’ll leave before noon on Thursday the twenty-second and return late the next night and then again at noon on Friday the thirtieth and come back the next day, very late.”
“OK, sure, not a problem.”
***
We spotted Congregation Beth Aaron on the eleven hundred block of North Broadway, across the street from St. Vincent Hospital. The building looked like a residence. There were no signs of any kind to identify it as a synagogue.
“Mrs. Rosenstein told me that until a few years ago there was quite a bit of anti-Semitism, even some Ku Klux Klan stuff in the 1920s, so when the temple was finished in 1940, they didn’t want it to attract any attention.”
I nodded and frowned, not happy with that information. We found a motel, checked in, showered and changed clothes, ate a light dinner at a small café next to the motel, and parked around the corner from the synagogue at 6:45, services to start at 7:00 p.m. There was a small gathering of folks standing outside talking in front of the building. Rosalie introduced me to Mr. and Mrs. Rosenstein, who both seemed very nice. They introduced us to some other very friendly folks who were all happy to welcome a young Jewish couple into their community.
After the service, we introduced ourselves to Rabbi Samuel Horowitz and his wife, Minna, who also made us feel welcome. They understood that Sidney was too far away for them to expect to see us more than a few times a year, but they seemed happy we had made the effort for these High Holy Days.
When we showed up again for Yom Kippur, almost every Jew in eastern Montana and northern Wyoming welcomed us, but it was a small congregation.
***
The “skunk boots,” stained and ugly after repeated tomato juice soakings, were scentless when I wore them outside. When I was in the heated truck, I could smell skunk. When I stopped for coffee or for lunch in a heated restaurant, everyone within ten feet started sniffing and looking around. Two weeks after Yom Kippur, I threw the boots in the trash.
Chapter 10: Black Cattle, Black Night
I incorporated the ringing of the phone into my dream. After the third ring, I roused, fumbled for the light, knocked the receiver off the cradle, and retrieved it from the floor.
“Yes, this is Dr. Gross,” I mumbled.
Dick Mathes’s too-happy voice brought me only half-awake. “Doc, you awake? You drop the phone?” He didn’t wait for me to respond. “The Simpson boys just pulled in with some waterbelly steers. You need to get over here.”
“What the hell time is it?” I croaked.
“It’s already four thirty, time to get up and going,” Dick responded.
“How the hell did the Simpsons find the steers in the middle of the night?”
“They found ’em late yesterday afternoon.” Dick laughed. “They brought ’em in from the pasture and loaded ’em into their stock trailer last night. They were just being nice, letting you sleep in.”
“I’ll thank them when I get there,” I grumbled.
Summer was gone. Every morning now brought a hard frost.
The Simpson brothers seemed extraordinarily happy to have gotten me out of my warm bed and gave me a big “Good morning, sunshine” when I came through the barn to the outside pens. I refrained from showing them my middle finger.
The pens and chutes behind the hospital were brightly lit. Unfortunately, the lights did not create any warmth. Five steers occupied one of the holding pens. Another four were lined up, head to tail, in the chute leading to the squeeze.
“The ones in the pen aren’t completely blocked,” Don Gordon said, handing me a steaming cup. I sipped the coffee as we observed the five in the corral. The steers were stamping their feet straining to urinate. All five were dribbling a little urine, their tails flicking in all directions, indicating pain.
The four steers in the chute were in bad shape, their urethras probably blocked with calculi. They were depressed, smelled of ammonia, their eyes bloodshot. One had a distended abdomen. He was still on his feet but looked moribund.
“Don, will you get me a bottle of Depropanex and one of Combiotic, please?”
Don indicated, with his chin, a cart placed in the lane. There were five filled 10 cc syringes and the bottle of Depropanex standing next to them. Depropanex relieved smooth muscle spasm. I hoped it would allow the steers to urinate with enough force to flush out the calculi. Five additional syringes were filled with the white antibiotic. The Simpson brothers helped Don and me crowd the five steers in the pen into one of the other chutes, and I gave each of them an intramuscular injectio
n of Depropanex and another of the Combiotic.
I removed my coat but kept on my down vest. Rolling up my shirtsleeves as high as possible, I pulled a plastic rectal sleeve over my left hand and arm and then lubricated the sleeve with mineral oil from a squeeze bottle. I climbed up and over the chute containing the sicker of the steers and down behind the last one in the line. I lifted the steer’s tail with my right hand and pushed my left hand into the warm rectum. The steer pressed forward into his cohorts bellowing his indignation. His bladder was distended, ready to burst. I removed my hand, inverting the rectal sleeve as I pulled it off.
“Don, if you Ted and Ed will move these steers, please,” I said. “Put the one I just examined in the squeeze chute first. His bladder is just about ready to rupture.”
Don and the Simpsons moved the animals while I did rectal exams on the other steers. Don plugged in clippers and removed the hair over the tail head and from the area under the anus on the steer restrained in the squeeze chute.
I opened up one of five “heifer” packs of surgical instruments that Don put on a cart next to the squeeze chute, along with a bottle of procaine and syringes and needles. I washed both of the shaved areas with soap and water and then applied some tincture of iodine.
I injected procaine into the epidural space, and the steer’s tail went limp. He didn’t respond to needle pricks of the skin around and under the anus. After washing and drying my hands, I put on a pair of sterile surgical gloves.
Don held the steer’s tail up, out of the way, while I made a bold incision, almost four inches long, directly on the midline about three inches below the anus. The skin and underlying tissues fell to the side as the scalpel blade slid down. It took only a moment for me to dissect between the muscles down to the penis. I pushed the retractor penis muscle to one side using my fingers to free the penis. I pulled on it with my left hand and severed it as far down as I could reach with the scalpel. I pulled the stump out, stepping to the side to avoid the stream of urine.
When the bladder was empty, I sutured the bottom of the penis stump to the bottom of the skin incision and then split the urethra about an inch up from the bottom of the stump with a scissors, spread the sides apart, and sutured each edge of the urethra to the skin wound margins on that side. Last, I closed the remaining skin over the top of the penis. The whole procedure, including the epidural anesthesia, took just over fifteen minutes. The steer was now a heifer, life saved until he could be sold for slaughter. I injected 10 cc of the Combiotic, and we turned him into one of the empty pens.
I performed the same procedure on the other steers. The poor animal with the distended abdomen and probable ruptured bladder was strictly a salvage procedure. I completed the heifer procedure on him and then inserted a trocar into his lower abdomen, draining off urine from the abdominal cavity. Next, I flushed the abdomen with three liters of saline mixed with antibiotic.
“If the tear is small and the bladder stays collapsed, it might heal. I could do a laparotomy and try to repair the tear in the bladder, but this steer is so sick he probably couldn’t withstand the shock of the surgery. Even if he lives, the surgery would cost you about the same as what you’ll get for him if he makes it to the sale barn,” I explained.
I then turned my attention to the other five steers. Two of them had only partially emptied their bladders; the other three had evacuated and no longer showed signs of pain. I passed a small-diameter urinary catheter as far as I could up the penis in each of the two that were still partially blocked and then back-flushed saline and antibiotics into the penis, hoping to clear the obstruction.
“We should keep these two here and continue to treat them. I hope they’ll flush out. The other three seem to have passed most of their stones. We need to keep them up and watch them close until you get them sold; they’re likely to block up again.”
“I expect we won’t get much for any of the new-made heifers,” Ed said. “The buyers will spot them immediately and knock down the price. The packing houses will make money off them, but we’re hosed.”
“Yeah, but we’ll get more for ’em now than if they’d died,” Ted responded.
“I need to keep and treat all of them for at least 24 hours,” I said. “That will take us to sale day. If he lives, the steer with the ruptured bladder will probably need to be with us until next week.”
While I started cleaning up, the Simpsons went into the clinic to settle the bill with Dick. When they returned, Ted unhooked their stock trailer. “We’ll pick it up on the way home. Will you and Don join us for some breakfast?”
“No thanks, guys. Looks like we have a full day ahead. We best get on with it. Thanks anyhow. We’ll take a rain check.”
The brothers waved as they drove off.
I checked the steers again before going inside to clean and re-sterilize the instrument packs. The two un-operated steers were passing urine in intermittent streams. All the steers, except the one with the ruptured bladder, were at the hayrack working at a bale of alfalfa hay. None of those happily eating indicated any displeasure about their recent ordeal.
“That’s a good sign,” I said to Don. “Have you ever seen an animal die with its head in a feed rack?”
“Nope,” Don replied.
“Let’s put the one with the ruptured bladder in a stall inside the barn,” I said.
***
The temperature never got above freezing all day. I did two more steer-to-heifer operations at two different ranches, treated a milk-fever case, three cases of foot rot, two mastitis cases, and an assortment of injuries to both horses and cattle. When I returned to the hospital, it was almost seven in the evening. I checked on the Simpsons’ steers while Don cleaned and refilled the truck. They all seemed to be doing well.
The phone rang, and I heard Dick’s voice: “I don’t know of any rabies in cattle round here.”
I went to the office door and gave Dick a questioning look. He made a face and shrugged.
“OK, Mrs. Greene.... Yes, I know how to get to your place.... Yes, I know. The mister just told you to call. I’ll send out the new young doc.... Yes, I’m certain he can handle the problem for you, probably twenty minutes or less.”
I called Rosalie. “Hi, honey, it’s me. I just got another call, and it sounds as if it’s going to take a while. You should go ahead and eat dinner; don’t wait for me. I don’t know when I’ll get home.... OK, see you after a bit. Love you!”
I told Don I could handle things, and he went home.
***
The Greenes’ farm was on the east edge of town, directly off the highway. I drove past their place many times each day. That morning, I’d seem twenty or thirty head of Black Angus cattle turned out in the sugar beet field that morning and already had a good idea of what the problem was.
I turned off the highway into the Greenes’ drive. Thick, low-hanging clouds hid both moon and stars. The headlights of the truck struggled to penetrate the gloom. I drove to the yard back of the house where a single light showed from the kitchen window. The yard was frozen mud. I parked twenty feet from the back porch door. As I turned off the ignition, the porch light came on, and Mr. Greene stepped out, pulling on his coat while sticking a three-battery flashlight into the back pocket of his coveralls. He waved for me to stay in the truck and walked around to the passenger door. I leaned over and opened it for him.
“She’s out in the beet field, Doc.”
Great... he has a black cow out in a field, either dead or dying, on a black night. I wonder if he actually knows where she is and if there are more than just the one.
“The last time I saw her,” Greene responded to my unasked question, “she was in the northeast corner of the field. There might a bin two or three others just standin’ around droolin’ too. I turned ’em out into the beet tops afore light of the mornin’ and saw ’em lookin’ sick when I come in for lunch. I had another field of beets to finish harvestin’ and hadn’t thought to tell the missus to call ’til I come in for d
inner. It was mostly dark, and I didn’t see the cows on the way in.”
Wonderful... we’re going to drive out into a forty-acre field to look for an unknown number of black cattle, dead or dying, on a dark night. “Well,” I said aloud, “since we don’t know where the sick cows are, we need to do a systematic search.”
Greene got out and opened the field gate. After I drove through, he closed it and got back into the truck.
“Go left from here. Th’ east-west fence is ’bout forty yards out. We can come off that.”
We slowly weaved our way back and forth across the field.
I hope these cattle aren’t moving around.
The beet farmers harvested sugar beets with a machine that digs up the beets and chops off the tops. The beets then ride a conveyer that dumps them into a truck or trailer. The discarded tops, with a small portion of the beet, end up back on the field. It was common practice to turn cattle into the field after harvesting the beets since the beet tops provide highly nutritious feed.
“As you know, cattle don’t normally chew their food much,” I said. “They swallow what they bite off and then eructate it up and chew at their leisure. When the beet top is large and frozen, it sometimes lodges in the esophagus. We call that choke. If the obstruction is complete, the animal can’t eructate.”
The glow from the dash barely outlined his face. A glance told me that Greene understood nothing of what I had just told him.
“What I mean is they can’t burp. The methane gas produced in their rumen builds up. When the rumen fills up with gas, it puts pressure on the diaphragm, and the animal can’t breathe. Eventually the cow suffocates.” Another glance told me Greene was nodding without comprehension.
“I think the cows have beet tops caught in their gullets. If we don’t find them and push the tops down into their belly, they will bloat and die.”
Animals Don't Blush Page 11
