Imaginary Cowgirl: Pulling Calves

After watching two episodes of The Last American Cowboy, I am pretty sure that I could pull a calf if I had to. There were, what, something like twenty calves pulled on that show the other night? I consider myself pretty hardy and have been around a lot of animals in dire circumstances, but really, that was rough. The Last American Cowboy is a new documentary on Animal Planet on Monday nights at 10 PM. At first I was puzzled by the late hour, but after all the calf pulling, I get it: You don't want to watch it right after dinner.

If you don't know what calf pulling is, consider yourself lucky. It's what you do when a cow is in distress and can't deliver the calf on her own, or when the calf is breech or turned in some unfortunate way, or when a blizzard strikes during calving season and you've just gotta get them calves out in a hurry. How? You go in, grab their little feet with your hands (or rope, or chains), and haul them out forceably. To make matters worse, drops in barometric pressure seem to make the cows want to drop their calves, bad circumstances or not. Thus, lots of calf pulling during the blizzard on The Last American Cowboy on Monday. It's kind of shocking, honestly. I've seen animals give birth and I've given birth myself, and I'm not squeamish about the whole thing, but calf pulling? Youch.

And then you've got the two feet of snow. So let's just say that it is now 100% certain that the Imaginary Cowgirl will never live in Montana or anywhere else where it snows. I will pull a calf if I have to, but I'm not doing it in a blizzard.