Forming and breaking bonds with animals

Posted 7/14/21

When I was 9 or 10, my parents decided I was physically able enough to manage the required operation of the rickety old iron pump located conveniently near the barnyard for livestock watering.

I …

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Forming and breaking bonds with animals

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When I was 9 or 10, my parents decided I was physically able enough to manage the required operation of the rickety old iron pump located conveniently near the barnyard for livestock watering.

I was to aim for about 100 strokes each time, sometimes more, never less, in a constant even motion, up and down — one to always bring up a load of water, in a hard gushing stream, the other down for another load. I often lost count of the strokes, the goal being to fill the small water tank outside the fenced-in pump area through the old bent-up roofing trough leading to the tank.

I had to keep up a steady pace because if I hesitated too long I would need to prime the pump by pouring a scoopful of water from the tank back down through the pump’s topside, to start the water up again. I had to be quick.

The tank had to be filled every day so our special old milk cow, Sally, dad’s horses, Bill and Susie, and a couple of gangly young calves could drink, and dad could carry buckets of water to the two or three pigs in a pen near the barn.

I often think about old Sally, she was like a family member, moving with us from place to place, as did the horses, too, over the years. There would be other milk cows in years to come, but near the end of Sally’s giving years, her huge dripping bag continued to leave its trail in the dust behind her ever patient steps.

Farm animals were often considered partners with their owners in the whole scheme of living, perhaps not so much because of a sense of similarity in needs but through a familiarity of alliances formed.

Men often had a favorite team of horses, women a special cow (like mom’s Sally), and kids often adopted anything that would cuddled up to them as babies. And, then there were the oddities, ones that were never quite forgotten.

At one of the many homes where I lived a friend and I found a nest of two baby bunnies in the dense Hollyhock patch behind the house and decided they would be good pets. We even named them after each other. But, shortly thereafter, because we had only found two and farms always have lots of cats, we quickly learned the need was to love and mourn — that some alliances fared better and vary often in their life expectancies.

Many years later in my life my husband would repeatedly ‘wax’ to me, reminiscently, about a certain chicken he had once owned, named appropriately Roostie. They were friends for a long time, he said. But when he went off to college the chicken broke up with him and refused to know him when he came back. I found it difficult to understand that relationship until later when I also fell victim repeatedly to certain creatures, many of which I’d saved from assorted dangers, or became familiar with in some way and all of which I had to part with in a variety of mournful ways.