The Collected Short Stories of Tod Collins

By Tod Collins

“As with this easier books, this is an easy-to-read,
chapter-at-a-time compendium of short stories written by a vet mountaineer, observer of life and accomplished author. Each session of reading leaves one either with a grin, wry smile, quizzical frown, or a tear on one’s cheek.”
- Ken Brannigan
“A Diaspora of Tales” is the synopsis of this book. In this publication South African awards-winning writer and columnist Tod Collins has assembled most of the contents of his earlier – now out –of –print –books. “Til the Cows Come Home” and Bull by the Horns” and has added several new chapters that have never seen the light of day.
The first part “Animal Antics” tells tales of a James Herriot style through which he achieved local and international recognition as a short story writer.

In other part he writes of “Human Happenings” and the Poetry of People” that share the author’s observations of, and experiences with, folk from a broad spectrum of his diverse life’s exploits . “Mountains Meanderings” chapters tell of expeditions to, on and among some of the world’s mountain ranges in traditional short story fashion all have a twist in the tail.
The pieces are crafted into amusing, or dramatic, or pity-filled tales.
For readers who missed the books that established Tod Collins as a stand-alone writer, this compendium is a treat!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tod Collins
• Release date: Mar 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463225080

Book preview

DEDICATION

This anthology of stories is again published in honour of my vet-partner-family of a third of a century, Peter and Ena Collier. Also for Bill Small my mountaineering and raconteuring mentor, and my family Trish, Carolyn, Leigh and Rebecca.

As I did for Bull by the Horns I also dedicate this compendium to my literary mentor and dear friend Cecil Slash Esprey and my grandson Matthew Tod, and I now add my granddaughter Emily Louise. To Catherine at Reach Publishers, "Thou, whom, seen nowhere,

I feel everywhere!" Thanks so much.

I give glory to our Lord for His grace in all things. Great, small and fabulously mystery-filled.

Also by Tod Collins:

‘Til the Cows Come Home (out of print)

Bull by the Horns (out of print)

The Black Sheep

Cullen

The Art of Being … An Awful Angler

Contents

Dedication

About the Author

Introduction

Part 1. Animal Antics

1. The Festive Season in a Part of Africa

2. You Just Never can Tell

3. Qualifying as a Wizard

4. J.K.

5. A Stony Problem

6. The Hat Trick

7. That’s what the Man Said

8. Tannie Elsie’s Magic Potion

9. Jessie the Brave

10. Ghiffy and the Canna

11. Mad Dogs and a Poacher

12. Gretl

13. Ginty

14. Two Special Dogs

15. Henry the Whirligig

16. Two Tales of Ticks

17. Damned if You do, Damned if You don’t

18. Two Walters

19. A Winter’s Tale

20. Sixpence and the Nail

21. Jitterbug Piglets and Some Jelly

22. Crime just doesn’t Pay

23. Nought Nought Double-Four

24. The Book and the Bottle

25. Saying Goodbye

26. Bushmansnek

27. Two Bad Lies

28. The Weird Condition of Ruby Girl

29. A Surprise Ending

30. It’s not Always Pretty

Part 2. Human Happenings

1. Then We were Friends

2. Stranger on the Beach

3. The Bridge over the Ngwangwana

4. Filling the Unforgiving Minute

5. Enthaba Ngcobo

6. The Tragedy of Brooke’s Store

7. At the Cost of Some Plums

8. Portmore

9. Mum, Jeeva & the July

10. Rigoletto and Rekindling

Part 3. Mountain Meanderings

1. A Brief Encounter in the Mountains

2. Susamatekkie

3. The Longest Night

4. Charles the Tin Man

5. Isiah of the Mountain

6. We Made the Front Pages

7. A Question of Identity

8. Pathos in Mumbai

Part 4. The Poetry of People

1. Priorities (of a Country Vet’s Kith and Kin)

2. The Peanutbutter Legend

3. The Sounds of Silence

4. Trompie of Treverton

5. Death of an Ornithologist

6. The Ultimate Reprimand

7. The Used Car Dealer

8. What do the Gentle Folk Say?

9. Henry IV

10. Oom Koos

11. James

12. A Man Before His Time

13. Coming Home

14. Floss, Sophie and Dr Tolle’s Ego

15. Arthur’s Demise

16. Late Tackle

17. Bad Times, Good Times

18. Reflections Behind the Wheel

19. Eat Your Heart Out, James!

20. A Legend in Our Time

21. A Most Sedulous Mind

22. Ben

Part 5. Starting Stories

1. How it all Began

2. Dr B’s Story

3. Thirty-Five Million Pounds!

About the Author

Tod Collins has written five books. His short stories have received recognition in competitions both abroad – in 2004 he was the winner of the BBC Commonwealth Africa section and runner-up overall – and locally in South Africa.

Short stories are his speciality although his autobiographic novel Cullen won the South African Independent Publisher’s prize for best novel in 2016. The story alludes to the author’s involvement in a tragic Himalayan expedition in 1975 and his subsequent self-imposed exile in the South Pacific.

In 2015 Bull by the Horns was awarded the Independent Publishers’ prize for best book of short stories at the J.M. Coetzee Book Festival. The Black Sheep won the category in 2017.

Collins’ day-time job is veterinary surgeon. He has practised for over forty years in the remote farming district of Underberg. This has brought him into close contact with all species of domesticated animals and their domesticated owners. His mountaineering exploits – in his home range the Drakensberg as well as mountains across the globe – have provided material for more stories, some including less domesticated humans.

Tod Collins has been married to Trish for almost forty years. They have three daughters and two grandchildren. He is working on two further novels.

Introduction

One of the stress factors that veterinary surgeons are constantly exposed to is being a vet. The profession is undergoing serious scrutiny, investigation, into the causes and remedies for its alarmingly high rate of depression and, worse, suicide. Besides compassion fatigue, financial ineptitude and constant exposure to euthanasia, vets are tagged by their occupation.

John, I’d like you to meet Tod. Tod is a vet. This is the standard introduction when strangers are drawn together. Not John, this is Tod. He wanders in the hills, fishes for trout, has three daughters, a gorgeous wife, and commits murder for second helpings of French rarebit and lemon merengue pie, and writes to try to stay sane.

Tod Collins has written stories and books using his ancestral literary genes (his great grandfather was professor of English Literature at Birminham University) and generous exposure to animals-and-vet anecdotes and rural raconteurs of legendary artfulness, to humans with their antics, humour and pathos on farms and on mountaineering trips, and to the folk tales from his home district in the mountains of South Africa. His first two books were ’Til The Cows Come Home published in 2010 and Bull By The Horns published in 2013. Sadly his publisher friend John McKenzie passed away and the printing house closed its doors.

Both books went out of print and a demand has warranted republishing. Collins has taken the bull by the horns and combined them in this anthology. In this anthology the chapters of the two books have been loosely categorised into tales involving animals (with or without vets’ involvement,) humans (comical, dramatic, or pitiful,) mountaineering anecdotes, and those that have been crafed to record some legendary folk tales of his home district.

The author has included new stories that have been written – sculpted is the verb he prefers – since the original books were released.

Although readers who know the Underberg district and particularly the characters that sprinkle this compendium might claim to be at an advantage, Collins’ earlier books received acclaim from people around the globe. Stories such as The Festive Season in a Part of Africa, Susamatekkie and Trompie of Treverton received writing awards locally and abroad.

Readers are once again challenged to decide which two stories are fictional. The remainder, the author insists, are based on non-fictional happenings.

PART 1

Animal Antics

God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds … and God saw that it was good.

1

The Festive Season in a Part of Africa

Two days after Christmas a Zulu woman and her recently-matriculated son sat patiently in our small waiting room for me to finish my Saturday morning clinic.

The two had caught the daily minibus taxi from the Mqatsheni area, just to the north of the Sani Pass. Her aged mother's aged cow had been straining to calve for two days, and some men in their neighborhood had recommended the vet from Ondini (Underberg).

So with the gangly kid in the cab to direct me, my assistant Mbambo and the woman in the back of my Isuzu pick-up, off we went. About an hour of driving - rough corrugated potholed district roads, turning off where Caiphas Mjwara’s trading store had been before his opposition burnt it to the ground, up the long hill, past a mud cabin amongst the wattle trees with a Coke sign outside saying Quiet - Rehearsal in Progress, then branching off onto the roughest of bush tracks which became a footpath which the wheels straddled for quite a bit further. Then we stopped at an abandoned kraal, quite close to the escarpment that towers up into the sky and Lesotho.

Where's the cow? I asked the lad.

We walk a little bit, he said.

So we gathered most of my gear and we four walked single file along the winding path.

Past other kraals with their rough patches of maize and wattle and peach trees, many kraals abandoned huts falling down (signs of the sad scourge of AIDS), across hillside streams, over rocks and boulders, overlooking the Mqatsheni river, and after about forty-five minutes of this we came to the remotest kraal. Three whitewashed thatched huts, a cleanswept forecourt and there under the ubiquitous peach trees (every Zulu kraal near the ‘berg has them growing at the edge of their yards) was the poor old brindled cow, dehydrated, totally fatigued.

They brought two nice wooden dining-room chairs from the middle hut, with colorful floral plastic seat coverings. I put my black bag and silver surgical pot on them after I had formally greeted and been greeted by Granny. Inkosikasi I called her. The Matriarch, about five feet three.

Believe it or not, I found the calf to still be alive when I did the examination; and he was an enormous blighter. So I drenched the cow with the tried and trusted electrolyte mixture that Peter Ardington had told me about, gave some injections, and with Mbambo helping, I performed a caesarian.

A whip-o-will (red chested cuckoo) called non-stop in the wattle trees near the river the whole time. That and the Christmas beetles were the only sounds that penetrated my concentration, I remember.

By the time I was inserting the final sutures a crowd of about 50 people had gathered.

There had been shouting across the valley no doubt telling everyone about the arrival of the Dokotela wesilwane and the entertainment he was providing.

Men standing, some leaning on their sticks, senior women sitting on the dry baked ground, mfaans (grinning youngsters) in the two peach trees and the bullcalf was trying to find his wobbly feet, shaking his damp head and snorting, getting rid of the slimy mucus in his nose and ears.

Then Granny sat on another of the chairs with the colorful coverings that someone had brought to the middle of the yard, cleared her throat and everyone shut up. We must talk about money (i'biznees) now she sort of crowed or cackled so everyone could hear. They all shuffled closer around us to follow the neegosheashuns! Serious stuff!

Well, I said, if I had not come out here and done my work you would have a dead cow and a dead calf. Not so?

She agreed as did about fifty others.

And I drove from Ondini all the way here in my isigadhla which drinks diesel like a kéhle (old man) drinks millet beer on a Sunday at midday.

Much mirthful chortling, especially when one mfaan in the peach tree nearly fell out when he acted drunk.

And if you look after this calf and it grows into a sturdy yearling bullock, when he is over a year old, in April when the thunder-storms have stopped coming every afternoon, at the stocksale in Ondini they will pay you about one and a half thousand rand for it. Not so?

The more senior grey beards agreed and nodded. So she did too.

And if this cow survives now, although she is old and tired and the ticks are very plentiful this summer, next autumn when the frosts begin you can sell her for over two and a half thousand rands.

A loud murmer of consent.

Caiphas Mjwara had sold five oxen for nearly four thousand five hundred rand, a bright fellow in a new emerald and yellow Sundowns tracksuit announced.

So then, Inkosikasi, my work has given you about four thousand rand that you won't have had. Just some tough meat, nyama.

Yes. Ehe.

So how about if we go halves - hlukanisa - and I take two thousand rands? I suggested.

Loud murmuring, and the little matriarch looked around and whispered to her friends and family.

That’s lots of money! she said. "iMali imningi."

"Yes indeed, but (kodwe)," I said, "seeing that we've just celebrated (eaten) Kissimus, and we're about to eat Neeuyear, and the cow is so weak that she might not see Neeuyear herself, I find it in my heart not to be too greedy, Inkosikasi."

Much appreciative murmuring and nodding of heads, and Jesu words.

"So I'll only charge you half of that. My charge is (ngiya biza) …. Seven hundred and fifty rand!"

Louder chattering and nods of approval. Éééh! She conferred with her daughter (the one that had called me) and her inner circle of consultants, again.

But! piped up Matric standing behind his grandmother, no longer the painfully shy youngster who'd sat in my truck. Half of two thousand ees not seven fifty, eet ees one thousand!

Oh-ho! I exclaimed. "You are indeed a learned young man (insizwe ihlakanphile), I made a mistake! However (kodwe), I am a man of my word and if I first said seven hundred and fifty then I shall stick to it."

Well, you should have heard the roars of appreciation and thanks. And she produced from her midriff somewhere a roll of two hundred rand notes that you could almost fill a bucket with, and she peeled off four of them, which she handed to me with a sort of arthritic curtsey and her other hand open, palm upward, alongside the giving hand, as is proper Zulu custom.

I dipped my knees a bit and took them from her with my two open hands alongside each other and counted them and said Nkosikasa you have given me too much, ... and before I could finish explaining that I don't carry change in my old black medical bag.. she sat straight upright with her shoulders back looked me firmly in the eye and said ... Keep lo change, it is for your assistant Mbambo!

Another loud roar of appreciation.

Man, the season of goodwill, of Jesu, is amazing.

She and her daughter asked if Mbambo and I would like some tea which we would have enjoyed, but Mbambo was anxious to go home for his week’s Kissimus leave, so we declined. Then we trudged back the sixty minutes mostly uphill, a long team of volunteers including the chap in the Sundowns tracksuit carrying my kit and behind us the big thunderclouds were starting to bank up over the ‘berg.

We stopped now and then to eat the ripe bramble jigijol berries that grow in vast profusion around most old kraals in this part of Africa ………..

In the festive season.



2

You Just Never can Tell

They told us that the piece of parchment paper called a University Degree allows you to learn how to become a veterinary surgeon. Also that vet students may not do their practical work (seeing practice we called it) with a vet who had been qualified for less than three years.

But those learning years as a new vet provide us with crocks full of fascinating experiences. Learning how to treat animals, and more important, how to treat their owners!

This one young man spent the better part of his first year as a qualified vet in Queenstown, Eastern Cape. Boet and Swaer country where they talk English with Ian Roberts’ Castrol can-of-the-best accents.

He worked for a great vet, a big man; big in stature, big in ability, and big in everyone’s regard. In the Grey Club over a beer or two the locals said had he not been studying to be a vet in his younger days, and instead taken rugby seriously, he’d have been a lock or number-8 for the Springboks.

That part of our country had some of South Africa’s top cattle farms, owned and run by names already legends in their own time. Mr. Donny Beal Preston the Exwell Friesland king. And Mr. S.L. (Shane) Moorcroft, the Syferpan Hereford legend.

These important clients would only have the big vet to attend to their livestock. Very strictly so! But … one July weekend the Boss went to the family cottage at Haga Haga. (typical of rural vets in those days, he seldom took weekends off) and on the Saturday evening Mr. Moorcroft needed a vet urgently. Very urgently.

A dystochia or difficult birth with one of his heifers. Tip-top genetics, world class. By the lights of his and the farm’s bakkies the young vet went to work, under the very critical glare of Mr. Moorcroft’s eye. It was an enormous calf, head and forelegs stuck in the heifer’s pelvis. He lubricated the birth canal with Lux flakes, he twisted and shook the calf, he instructed the men to pull the obstetrical ropes at this and then that angle, he alternated tensions between the head and forelegs, … but it would not budge.

I’m afraid I’ll have to perform a caesarian section to deliver this calf, Mr. Moorcroft, stammered the puffing and panting vet, steaming in the winter air.

I could have told you that a bloody hour ago! Why the heck do you think I called you! came the reply.

So, under a winter moon and two pairs of headlights the young vet, assisted by the distinguished farmer, performed the surgery. Conversation was at a minimum, the farmer being fed-up with the ineptness of the wet-behind-the-ears youngster, and the vet now seething at the situation he was in.

Damn it, he thought, let’s get this over and done with so I can get the hell out of here, away from this bugger and back to my digs, a warm fire and a hot meal.

The calf, when the uterus was opened, was lifeless … no movement and no breathing. Bloody thing’s dead too! snorted the legendary stockman as the two of them tossed the sturdy body into the darkness.

The rest of the operation was carried out in silence now, both men really narked. Once the final sutures were placed he sped off with hardly a goodbye and allowed his chagrin to stew in his chest for months afterwards. He never set foot on that farm again.

However, another young vet struck it rich. He was a thickset bloke with a Meditteranean complexion with black-haired forearms like a blacksmith, and a matching sort of bedside manner. He was doing locum work in Jo’burg after qualifying. Earning some good money to finance his overseas stint. Hundreds of dogs and cats were the order of the day, and sometimes some of those unusual pets like hamsters, guinea-pigs, tropical fish or budgies and canaries.

The latter were a pain because in those days very little attention had been paid to them during the five or six years that it took to get the degree. The one that allowed you to learn how to be a vet.

One day a man brought in a cage with a canary in it. When it was his turn he took his bird into the consulting room and explained to the fresh graduate what symptoms his bird was showing, and that his previous birds had shown before they had died. The young man, let’s for arguments sake name him Nick, listened patiently while the client went on and on.

Then he apologized in a rough way and told the canary owner to hang on while he attended to a call of nature.

I’m off for a minute. Too much coffee, he explained over his shoulder, I’ve been up all night with a whelping bitch.

But instead of using the lavatory for its intended purpose, he sat on the closed toilet lid and paged frantically through a little reference book that had been gathering dust in the back office.

He returned to the consulting room and told the canary man that he’d given the case some thought and the birdie was suffering from such-and-such a condition. For which there was a remedy, and against which there was some prophylaxis for his other birds. He didn’t expect ever to hear from or see the bird bloke again.

Amazingly that bird recovered fully. Moreover no more of the client’s birds sickened, let alone died. The man was the President of the South African Cage Bird Association, and he and the members had been desperate to find a vet who could help them. Whether Doctor Nick liked it or not he was the answer to their prayers, and his fame sped around the country’s cage bird fraternity like a whirlwind!

The deluge of bird cases that descended on him led to his intense study of whatever literature he could lay his hands on, and before long he was indeed S.A.’s bird vet fundi!

And as far as I know still is.

Now for a post-script back to the young vet in Queenstown

About four years after he had experienced that miserable Saturday evening with the Syferpan Hereford heifer he found himself travelling from his new home in KwaZulu Natal to Cape Town. To visit his future wife. He chose the route down through the Karoo and the first night he spent with his former employer.

Over dinner he told his mentor and gracious wife what he’d been up to in the intervening years abroad and at his new practice. Afterwards they retired to the lounge where the older man relaxed his huge frame in an armchair and with a whisky in his hand said, I’ve been looking forward to this moment for quite a long time. Do you remember delivering a calf by Caesar for Shane Moorcroft once?

Of course I do! he exclaimed, I’ll never forget that bloomin’ episode as long as I live!

Well, old S.L. insisted that when we next met, I was to tell you this. The calf that you and he hurled into the night as dead ... that calf landed with a thud and took a breath … a gasp that neither of you heard … but Mrs. Moorcroft who was in the shadows heard it … and she loaded it on her bakkie, took it to the kitchen and worked on it.

He paused and took a swig of his drink.

Go on, urged our youngster, leaning forward intrigued.

Last year it was the Reserve to the Grand Champion Bull at the S.A. Hereford Championships in Bloemfontein!



3

Qualifying as a Wizard

Mark Perry drove with a rush into the yard as daylight faded. His farm was about 40 km away between Himeville and Impendle on rough roads and he had driven like the clappers.

Heck, Doc, I’m sorry to bother you at home, said the flustered farmer, I’m late for the Round Table meeting and this bird was pecking something probably a slow mbeeba on the road at Shaggy Wood when I hit it. I hope it’ll be OK!

It was a Jackal Buzzard, a male in full plumage. It’s actually a travesty that such a noble creature should have been given such a debasing name. Lesser Red-Chested Eagle would be far more fitting, but the taxonomists hopefully have good reasons.

The bird in Mark’s boot was about as unconscious as can be. A quick examination showed that there were no fractures of his wings or legs, so I transferred it to my practice bakkie. Nowadays many Telkom pick-ups also have the sort of lid that the Howick vets made popular in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Instead of a canopy the back was covered by two centrally-hinged lids. Mark flew off to his meeting and I went back to supper with Trish and our two small daughters. I clean forgot about the buzzard and the evening was taken up with the usual things that young families do before bedtime.

I was booked to spend the next morning at Peakvale, Kit Holt’s dairy farm. For various reasons Kit was chucking up farming, so the farm had been sold and the cattle and equipment were to be auctioned the following week. Every cow and heifer needed a veterinary examination. Pregnancy status, udder condition, teeth, general health, blood collection for brucellosis, a tuberculosis test, and ultimately the issuing of the official veterinary certificate.

The day dawned frosty, crisp and clear, the ‘berg was still purple and the mist was rising above the vleis. Don Ogilvie, Kit’s ex-Zimbabwean manager, and the farm’s entire labour force was at hand. Their day’s work would be cleaning or painting tractors, balers, mowers, forage harvestors, ploughs, unwary fowls, or herding the dairy cattle into the handling pens.

My arrival was reason enough for the workers to take a breather and they all watched as I jumped out of my Cortina bakkie and hailed them with a Howzit Don, Sanibona Madoda! Ninjani?

Aai, sikhộna, (Cool) they replied as I opened the lid for my overall, boots and vet paraphernalia.

With a silent but impressive whoosh the forgotten Jackal Buzzard swept from his dark overnight recovery room. As the bird brushed past me I remembered my feathered patient of the previous evening. With a few powerful wing beats the buzzard flew up to the bare poplar tree in the yard, around which the implements were arranged. There he settled and preened himself as the sun warmed the day.

I remained silent and simply raised my hand in salutation to the bird. The men stared open-mouthed, their stares moving from the bird to the nonchalant dokotela wesilwane. Don’s bushy eyebrows twitched and his blue eyes twinkled but he didn’t say a word. After a half-hour or so of serious work I, who was now being treated with extraordinary regard, looked up at the bird, raised my hand and shouted hambané manjé! (off you go now). At that very moment the bird left his perch, swooped low over the cattle and disappeared into the distance over the wetland towards Donnington Farm.

It is debatable who was more astonished, the vet or the onlookers, only I didn’t show it.

The story of my magical rapport with that wild raptor spread afield and some sort of reputation was spawned.



The vet practice, of which I the mystical vet was the junior partner, had rural Zulu folk as regular clients. Usually they sought medicines for ailing cattle, sheep, goats, dogs or horses. Mostly it was expected that the vets could diagnose and supply remedies without ever seeing or examining the animals. Occasionally a beast would be brought to the surgery trussed on the back of a bakkie, or dogs (mostly Greyhounds) were dragged in for vaccinations, or with gunshot wounds or fractured limbs.

(I wrote this paragraph in the past tense because nowadays, 2010, our Zulu speaking clientele are far more sophisticated with regards to their pet care and livestock management.)

One consultation proved to be difficult, and different. A wizened Grandfather wasn’t happy that the young vet recommended a particular injection and drench for his emaciated cow. We debated the merits of the case and treatment at length. Eventually in frustration I asked the aging client to come through to the back office. There I collected a green surgical drape and a little box which contained many interestingly shaped bladder stones that had been removed from dogs over the years. Spreading the cloth on the desk-top, I shook the ivory-coloured uroliths in my hands, tilted my head back, closed my eyes and chanted something that could have been a mixture of Tibetan, Kyrgiz and Peruvian Indianese. ThenI scattered the stones on the drape with a flourish.

Hau, Baba, I exclaimed as I peered closely at the objects, ikôna inkinga lapha! Wé- mamé! (Omigosh Father, there’s a problem here! Bliksem!)

Then I nodded excitedly, smiled at the old man and grabbed the remedies from him. I disappeared into the medicine room and returned with different packets and another bottle. The cow, I urged with eyes as wide as I could, needed these muthis, but for them to work well the cow should also get two scoops of crushed mealies each morning and evening.

This time the client beamed, paid the bill happily and caught the minibus back to his home. That cow (thanks to the maize) turned the corner and produced a calf in the spring. The owner, who happened to be the Chief’s brother, reinforced this lucky vet’s reputation as a wizard animal doctor!



The third, and conclusive, proof of wizardom was actually Leigh, our three year old daughter’s doing. She was with me when I visited Clovelly, which after Ralph and Anthony Hardingham at Goxhill was the largest dairy farm in the area. Leigh had insisted on bringing a favourite teddy bear and a toy flute with her.

After I had helped deliver a bonny calf from one of Arthur and Philip Turner’s magnificent Holstein cows, their dairy foreman, Abel Chezi asked me to have a look at a persistent downer cow. She’d been down for nearly two weeks. My heart sank.

Downer cows are enigmas that cause country vets the world over to lose countless hairs and hours of sleep. Sometimes, after masses of infusions, injections, drenches and weeks of physiotherapy, they suddenly decide that it’s time to stand up. Others stubbornly resist all these efforts and treatments and end up as ration meat.

Most farmers persevere with downer cows for a week, maybe ten days. Dermot Clowes at Scotston used to wait a month though. There’s no quick fix, and most vets know this. I examined her pelvis from the outside and from the inside, I took her temperature and pulse and listened to her heart and lungs. I pinged her abdomen for a displaced fourth stomach and did heaven knows what more a desperate young vet could do for the highly respected farmers.

Mr Turner, Philip, I’m afraid there’s nothing much more than the usual anti-inflammatories, vitamins and minerals that I can suggest, but I think she’s really approaching her end. I lamented.

Don’t worry, Mr Turner consoled me. We didn’t think you’d be able to do anything but Chezi heard that you’re something of a sangoma you know! Anyway come across to the house for some tea and Wendy’s scones and jam.

However, after I’d packed my overall, bag, buckets and boots away and was climbing into the truck little Leigh said Daddy, I think the moo-cow wants to hear some music! She looks so sad and handed me her toy flute.

I hesitated, then took it from her and self-consciously walked back across the kikuyu, put the instrument to my lips, theatrically positioned my fingers on the holes and gave a sharp blast alongside the doomed animal’s ear. With an enormous belch she sprang up! The stockmen and the farmers nearly lost their eyeballs. I somehow kept the mirth off my face as I tried to give Chezi and his astonished assistants a level look.

Over a few pots of tea and Clovelly’s famous scones and jam, Arthur and Philip Turner concurred I surely had graduated as Cattle Wizard, cum laude!



4

J.K.

Tod, don’t feel embarrassed but J.K. has asked me to have a look at that heifer you saw on Monday. Peter’s words jarred me somewhat.

As a young vet one hopes to be accepted by all animal owners as the answer to their problems, but it doesn’t take long to be brought down to earth. Mr John J.K. Anderson was one of he farmers put on earth to be one of my puller-downers.

Broadacre Farm has attracted tall distinguished owners since I first visited it in 1976. At the time it was J.K. the ex-Zululand sugar cane farmer, then the attorney Wykerd van der Merwe, and now it is Graham Acutt, descended from a line of ODF (Old Durban Family) early Natal settlers. They were all born with an air of gentility that commands respect.

J.K. had called for veterinary help because a yearling heifer had been losing condition, standing around looking thoughtful and dribbling saliva. Her appetite seemed ravenous but when she tried to eat it was a weak effort and much of the grass or meal simply fell out of her mouth. She spent much of her time at the water tough too. I had driven out to Broadacre to attend to the beast because Peter, my boss, was having a busy Monday.

Oh so they sent the assistant! was the crusty welcome I had received from the farmer who had the looks and bearing of Field Marshal Montgomery of Alamein.

My initial diagnosis was some form of rumen indigestion and I’d decided to dose the heifer with the old-fashioned tonic of vinegar and brown sugar. Mrs Joan Anderson’s pantry was raided and the farmer watched critically as I mixed the bottle of vinegar and Illovo brown sugar with another bottle of warm water. However he had grunted with disgust when I tried to get the beast to drink the elixir from a wine bottle – that, Peter had insisted, was an essential part of a country vet’s apparatus.

The brown mixture had spewed back out of the heifer’s mouth and she coughed violently. Some must have trickled down her windpipe, I’d apologized , and had then fed her a small amount. It stayed down. Again I had tipped the bottle slightly and again she swallowed and retained a half cupful.

Mr Anderson, I’d announced, I’ll tube her because at this rate it’ll take an hour to get the whole lot down.

Well whatever you do, make sure you don’t kill her! His gaunt figure had seemed even more menacing. So the Zulu herdsman had held the nose tongs and the wedge-shaped mouth gag keeping her jaws apart and I had introduced the stomach tube into her throat. There, you can see the end of the pipe going down her oesophagus, I’d announced proudly, now once it gets to her rumen we’ll hear and smell some gas belching up.

But the gas never came and the tube stopped abruptly. There was some form of obstruction! However the skeptical farmer pointed out that there couldn’t be a blockage as she had swallowed some of the mixture, albeit slowly. I was in a spot.

Mr Anderson, I’d said hesitantly, perhaps I should open her up with a rumenotomy and see if I can feel into the opening where her oesophagus enters her rumen. There might be a potato or something I can feel?

Pah! She couldn’t have found any potatoes! Anyway, have you ever done this operation before? the farmer had asked.

When I worked in Queenstown for the first year after I qualified, I replied brightly, I did a lot of wire ops, rumenotomies to remove pieces of chopped-up baling wire that had lodged in the cows’ reticulums.

No, I’d rather you didn’t experiment on my animals, he’d retorted, that sounds quite a desperate last resort. I was a bit crestfallen that my professional advice was being spurned, but we agreed that she would be treated conservatively. The herdsman and his assistant would continue dosing her with small amounts of the remedy.

You’d better clean up and have a cup of tea, J.K. had suggested, but my chagrin had the better of me and I mumbled about other calls waiting, rinsed my hands under a garden tap and left the farm. That was two days before Peter told me of J.K.’s request for him, the experienced vet, to re-attend to the patient.

Look, said Peter sympathetically, seeing as you first attended to the heifer and there aren’t any calls waiting, why don’t you come with me and the two of us can have a look at her. I jumped at the chance to watch him at work so we piled into his brown Volvo and drove back to Broadacre.

The heifer was even scrawnier than before as she hadn’t eaten anything more substantial than small amounts of mealie-meal gruel that they had dosed her. Peter gave her an extremely thorough examination and concluded it with an attempt to pass his stomach tube. Again the pipe only reached, we estimated, the entrance to her rumen, and could go no further.

Let’s see if whatever is causing the blockage can be pushed through, Peter muttered, but first let’s loosen the oesophagus with a smoothe muscle relaxant. His needle hit the jugular vein without the slightest effort and he slowly infused the drug. We waited a few minutes, the two older men exchanging small talk about the weather and the beef and mutton prices.

Okay, let’s have a crack! Peter announced confidently. The tube that he was using was a fairly rigid pipe he called his probang, and he applied a great deal of force. Nothing budged.

He straightened up and looked the farmer in the eye, There’s certainly a serious obstruction of sorts down there J.K., she’ll have to be opened up if we’re going to save her.

For the next hour I watched as my senior-partner-to-be showed his wonderful surgical skills. He shaved, disinfected, anaesthetized and made a neat incision behind the heifer’s ribs; then using a metal frame with a series of hooks called Weingarth’s apparatus, opened her rumen and splayed it out like a funnel. He reached in and when his arm was almost up to his armpit said he had located the oesophogeal opening. He stayed in that position for what seemed like an age, all the while giving us a commentary.

I’ve inserted one finger, yes there’s some material here, let’s see, I’m hooking some of it through, yes, here it comes. Ah, some more, wow there’s quite a stack of it …..

Then, with a flourish my tutor and mentor withdrew his arm, a large bundle in his grasp. Baling twine!

Aah, Tod, so you weren’t too far off the mark were you, J.K. nodded and smiled at me, in Queenstown they held their bales together with wire, here we use plastic twine!

Seeing as it was his case originally, I think he should complete the op, Peter said to the farmer, but I’ll close the rumen first.

Both men watched as I cautiously sutured the muscle layers