“No doubt the universe will unfold as it should,” I tell my husband (sort of citing my favorite poem “Desiderata”). This was after we returned home from our neighbor’s place up the hill. Most times you go to neighboring homes and receive tomatoes or a nice slice of pie. Not us.
I was peacefully doing some watering this morning and feeding the wild birds and the canaries. All in my own sweet world. Before I knew it, the neighbor up the hill had stopped his truck and was enthusiastically chatting to me in Spanish and telling me about the cow we had rescued in the vineyard that time and now we needed to take her in permanently.
My Spanish is low grade and his English worse than that, so it was quite the convo. Before we knew it and after a lot of running and stumbling and failing to lasso said bovines from one corner of his field to the other, we seniors managed to physically drag one full-sized cow and one steer — not at the same time — reluctantly up one hill, then another, then downhill to Solace. They did not go willingly, I might add, and — don’t you know — a stubborn bovine weighs a lot, even on a good day!
Which universe was supposed to unfold in this way on what might have been a peaceful Sunday in our world, you might be wondering. Our neighbor should never have animals — ahem — because they mostly end up at our place. So far, over the years, we have received a queenie pup, a black dingo mix and a black mountain dog from up there. We rescued a beautiful cow from the vineyard one time — that was also his — but he eventually claimed her after we had fed her for two days (we called her Delilah).
And so here we have it. He tells us he is homing this cow that we thought was Delilah. Of course, we get to his place, and she looks a little the same, not really, but it was too late — he knew we were already taking her home. He had our $300. What are we doing, we are not cow people? Then we see her baby — oh dear me. Drop dead and kill me now, milk chocolate eyes and goofy legs. We wanted the baby. Oh no, you can’t take the baby without the mama, he said, trying to give us a discount on the pair. Aye, aye aye — I’m supposed to be doing laundry and cleaning up my farm, not dragging home two new very large breed babies!
My husband googles what these large creatures take to feed on a daily basis, and I just about keeled over. At least we no longer have teenagers at home! Life is for the learning, is it not. We’ll manage. We really will. Don’t worry about us. He and I don’t need to eat that well.
Who knows what ultimately will become of the lovely Delilah and her yet unnamed steer with the milk chocolate eyes? I do know that we will take care of them to the best of our ill-educated abilities, and we will continue to ask for experienced friends’ counsel in order to do better by them. I hope that will be sufficient for the universe to look kindly upon us all, knowing that they could not stay in the situation they were in, and that rescue was the only option so we could all sleep at night and Delilah could raise her baby in the way she deserved.
Some days are just like that — completely bonkers, to coin a superb English phrase. We had no plans to bring home one cow today, let alone two, and yet here we are with the beautiful Delilah and her baby boy in our meadow. Our llamas are screaming at the universe right now, because they always scream before they ask questions, but mother and baby are just calmly nibbling on the remnants of green grass we have in the back pasture and likely getting ready to come up to the house for some real hay for supper.
As is always the case with Solace, the characters throw a fit when a new character arrives; and then they calm down and it becomes their norm. Until, that is, the next character comes along, and they feel the need to scream some more.
What did you do this weekend? Bet you didn’t rescue a cow — or even two. Life is nuts.
For the record, our neighbor wants to rehome his whole farm of a mama cow fat with calf, a mama and baby goats, a horse and a boat load of chickens. Message me at 831-229-0663 if you think you or someone you know might be interested.
It takes a village to provide for the creatures that cannot provide for themselves, and no doubt the universe will unfold as she does. It does take a village and, from an animal rescuer’s perspective, when in need, the village supplies.
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“Whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”
—Desiderata
