All Creatures Great and Small Read online

  I found the only way to stop myself going nearly mad with boredom was to keep reminding myself what I was there for. So when I came to a gaunt red cow with a pendulous udder I straightened up and turned to the farmer.

  “I’m going to take a milk sample from this one. She’s a bit hard in that left hind quarter.”

  The farmer sniffed. “Please yourself. There’s nowt wrong with her but I suppose it’ll make a job for somebody.”

  Squirting milk from the quarter into a two ounce bottle, I thought about Siegfried’s veterinary friend who always took a pint sample from the healthiest udder he could find to go with his lunchtime sandwiches.

  I labelled the bottle and put it into the car. We had a little electric centrifuge at Skeldale House and tonight I would spin this milk and examine the sediment on a slide after staining by Ziehl-Neelsen. Probably I would find nothing but at times there was the strange excitement of peering down the microscope at a clump of bright red, iridescent T.B. bacilli. When that happened the cow was immediately slaughtered and there was always the thought that I might have lifted the death sentence from some child—the meningitis, the spinal and lung infections which were so common in those days.

  Returning to the byre I finished the inspection by examining the wall in front of each cow.

  The farmer watched me dourly. “What you on with now?”

  “Well, if a cow has a cough you can often find some spit on the wall.” I had, in truth, found more tuberculous cows this way than any other—by scraping a little sputum on to a glass slide and then staining it as for the milk.

  The modern young vet just about never sees a T.B. cow, thank heavens, but “screws” were all too common thirty years ago. There were very few in the high Pennines but in the low country on the plain you found them; the cows that “weren’t doing right,” the ones with the soft, careful cough and slightly accelerated breathing. Often they were good milkers and ate well, but they were killers and I was learning to spot them. And there were the others, the big, fat, sleek animals which could still be riddled with the disease. They were killers of a more insidious kind and nobody could pick them out. It took the tuberculin test to do that.

  At the next four places I visited, the farmers had got tired of waiting for me and had turned their cows out. They had all to be brought in from the field and they came slowly and reluctantly; there was nothing like the rodeo I had had with Mr. Kay’s heifers but a lot more time was lost. The animals kept trying to turn back to the field while I sped around their flanks like a demented sheep dog; and as I panted to and fro each farmer told me the same thing—that cows only liked to come in at milking time.

  Milking time did eventually come and I caught three of my herds while they were being milked, but it was after six when I came tired and hungry to my second last inspection. A hush hung over the place and after shouting my way round the buildings without finding anybody I walked over to the house.

  “Is your husband in, Mrs. Bell?” I asked.

  “No, he’s had to go into t’village to get the horse shod but he won’t be long before he’s back. He’s left cows in for you,” the farmer’s wife replied.

  That was fine. I’d soon get through this lot. I almost ran into the byre and started the old routine, feeling sick to death of the sight and smell of cows and fed up with pawing at their udders. I was working along almost automatically when I came to a thin, rangy cow with a narrow red and white face; she could be a crossed Shorthorn-Ayrshire. I had barely touched her udder when she lashed out with the speed of light and caught me just above the kneecap.

  I hopped round the byre on one leg, groaning and swearing in my agony. It was some time before I was able to limp back to have another try and this time I scratched her back and cush-cushed her in a wheedling tone before sliding my hand gingerly between her legs. The same thing happened again only this time the sharp-edged cloven foot smacked slightly higher up my leg.

  Crashing back against the wall, I huddled there, almost weeping with pain and rage. After a few minutes I reached a decision. To hell with her. If she didn’t want to be examined she could take her luck. I had had enough for one day—I was in no mood for heroics.

  Ignoring her, I proceeded down the byre till I had inspected the others. But I had to pass her on my way back and paused to have another look; and whether it was sheer stubbornness or whether I imagined she was laughing at me, I don’t know, but I decided to have just one more go. Maybe she didn’t like me coming from behind. Perhaps if I worked from the side she wouldn’t mind so much.

  Carefully I squeezed my way between her and her neighbour, gasping as the craggy pelvic bones dug into my ribs. Once in the space beyond, I thought, I would be free to to do my job; and that was my big mistake. Because as soon as I had got there the cow went to work on me in earnest. Switching her back end round quickly to cut off my way of escape, she began to kick me systematically from head to foot. She kicked forward, reaching at times high on my chest as I strained back against the wall.

  Since then I have been kicked by an endless variety of cows in all sorts of situations but never by such an expert as this one. There must be very few really venomous bovines and when one of them uses her feet it is usually an instinctive reaction to being hurt or frightened; and they kick blindly. But this cow measured me up before each blow and her judgement of distance was beautiful. And as she drove me further towards her head she was able to hook me in the back with her horns by way of variety. I am convinced she hated the human race.

  My plight was desperate. I was completely trapped and it didn’t help when the apparently docile cow next door began to get into the act by prodding me off with her horns as I pressed against her.

  I don’t know what made me look up, but there, in the thick wall of the byre was a hole about two feet square where some of the crumbling stone had fallen out. I pulled myself up with an agility that amazed me and as I crawled through head first a sweet fragrance came up to me. I was looking into a hay barn and, seeing a deep bed of finest clover just below I launched myself into space and did a very creditable roll in the air before landing safely on my back.

  Lying there, bruised and breathless, with the front of my coat thickly patterned with claw marks I finally abandoned any lingering illusions I had had that Ministry work was a soft touch.

  I was rising painfully to my feet when Mr. Bell strolled in. “Sorry ah had to go out,” he said, looking me over with interest, “But I’d just about given you up. You’re ’ellish late.”

  I dusted myself down and picked a few strands of hay from my hair. “Yes, sorry about that. But never mind, I managed to get the job done.”

  “But … were you havin’ a bit of a kip, then?”

  “No, not exactly, I had some trouble with one of your cows.” There wasn’t much point in standing on my dignity. I told him the story.

  Even the friendliest farmer seems to derive pleasure from a vet’s discomfiture and Mr. Bell listened with an ever-widening grin of delight. By the time I had finished he was doubled up, beating his breeches knees with his hands.

  “I can just imagine it. That Ayrshire cross! She’s a right bitch. Picked her up cheap at market last spring and thought ah’d got a bargain, but ah soon found out. Took us a fortnight to get bugger tied up!”

  “Well, I just wish I’d known,” I said, rather tight lipped.

  The farmer looked up at the hole in the wall. “And you crawled through …” he went into another convulsion which lasted some time, then he took off his cap and wiped his eyes with the lining.

  “Oh dear, oh dear,” he murmured weakly. “By gaw, I wish I’d been here.”

  My last call was just outside Darrowby and I could hear the church clock striking a quarter past seven as I got stiffly out of the car. After my easy day in the service of the government I felt broken in mind and body; I had to suppress a scream when I saw yet another long line of cows’ backsides awaiting me. The sun was low, and dark thunder clouds piling up in the we