Sprinkles

My husband loves having lots of critters around. From the sounds of it, he had lots of different pets when he was growing up, ranging from exotic monkeys, lizards, raccoons and porcupines to the more ordinary horses and dogs. When we were talking about moving down here last winter, I know he was most excited about all the opportunities there were to fill this place up with our very own petting zoo. I'm slightly less ecstatic since I'm generally the one who ends up with more chores, particularly in the summer when he's working lots of hours. Last night Robert managed to bring home a blind baby heifer calf from one of the neighbors. She's a pretty nice baby, but I can see already she is going to be a fair amount of work...Robert's already got me snagged into feeding at nights. Luckily she's got a pretty mild disposition right now and is pretty easy to be around. You can't tell from looking at her that she is blind, but it becomes pretty obvious when you start trying to feed her. If she looses hold of the bottle, she is instantly frantic and instead of bumping and mauling you like a normal calf, she's all over the place trying to figure out where the good stuff went. Carter decided she wanted to name the baby "Sprinkles" (one of her favorite things to eat--the ones you shake out to decorate cookies...). She almost settled on "Twinkle" for her favorite song, Twinkle Little Star. I think I'm glad Sprinkles won out.

Now I'm just hoping we can find her a friend. I know cattle are very social animals and don't do nearly as well all by themselves. I'm hoping for a free goat or sheep and have passed word through the local moccasin telegraph, hopefully that will turn up something. There are some for sale, and I got word back on another bum calf for sale, but they are expensive and with the price of milk, they are going to be costly to raise. I made Robert PROMISE that if her brought her home and we took care of her, that we would NOT!! eat her. If being blind is too big of a handicap for her and something needs to be, then someone else can eat her, but I just can't. Period. I understand where my food comes from and all that, but I just can't hand raise a baby then turn around and serve it for dinner. I sincerely hope I'm never hungry enough where that suddenly seems like not such a bad idea!

My Aunty Linda managed to get in a bit of a horse wreck and ended up in the hospital with a mild concussion along with some broken ribs and a collar bone. Ouch! Carter is going to miss her for the next couple of weeks as the last thing Aunty needs for her recovery is a demanding toddler! We're hoping she feels better soon!