BUFFALO JOURNAL: SLIPPER
By
Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear
The photograph on the wall of the den shows a buffalo calf with wide sparkling eyes looking straight into the camera. Her face is luminous, as though the light emanates from inside her, rather than pouring down from the sunny sky. Over the past decade we have raised six orphaned or abandoned calves, but Slipper was different. Her story is one of those heavenly tales, out of time, beyond space, more profound than love or sorrow.
We found Slipper lying alone in the soft hay by the feeder. We don’t know how long she’d been there, but she appeared to be one day old. As anyone who has ever tried to catch a soon-to-be “bottle baby” knows, it’s ordinarily a real chore, involving great stealth, bursts of speed, and wild leaps to grab a leg. We were surprised, then, when she let us walk to within five feet of her before she stood up.
And then we understood.
Our other “bottle babies” had been simple cases. Two were orphaned when their mothers were struck by lightning; one cow was apparently shoved off a cliff in a particularly violent thunderstorm, leaving us her two-day old daughter; two calves came from first-time mothers who just walked away from their babies and never came back.
As we approached Slipper, she struggled to get on her feet, and we saw that she had a twisted right front leg. Two days later the vet would say, “Oh, that’s not bad! It’ll straighten out!” What none of us knew, of course, was that Slipper’s weak leg had prevented her from getting up to nurse after she was born. We all know what happens to calves that don’t get colostrum (mother’s “first” milk that kicks on the immune system,) within the first few hours of birth. What’s different about Slipper’s story is that it’s not about death, it’s about five days of extraordinary life.
Since we did not know that Slipper was going to die, we treated her as though her leg would get better. We took her for long walks up the canyon and carried her home when her leg grew too weak to hold her. More than any of our other calves, she had an insatiable curiosity about the world. Most bottle babies are impatient. Nothing is more
important than feeding time. But Slipper was often late for her feedings, not just because her leg prevented her from moving quickly, but because there was always one more grass stem that needed smelling, one more cottontail that required a solid appraisal. She loved everything alive.
On the third day we took her bottle outside and called her. When she didn’t come, we went looking for her. She was in the backyard staring raptly at a winding line of ants. She watched them for such a long time that we, too, knelt to see what was so fascinating. Finally, after several minutes, she looked up, saw her bottle, and drank. Who can say what she found so interesting about the ants? Maybe she knew she didn’t have long to learn about this world and was trying to cram in each precious moment. We suspect she believed that everything alive deserved lengthy consideration–simply because it was alive.
As her health declined and she no longer had the strength to walk in the backyard, she spent her time lying on a soft rug outside the front door. Watching her was a lesson in and of itself. She seemed constantly aware of the growing pain inside her, but rather than turning away from life, she seemed to turn to it for solace. When birds came to perch within a few feet of her, she watched them
with wide eyes, remaining so still and quiet that the birds often cocked their heads to study her, as though not certain she was alive.
But she was. For another two days. Then she was gone.
We buried her in the backyard beneath the cottonwood trees where she’d stood for hours watching the leaf shadows dance when the wind blew the branches.
Every time we pass her grave, we smile and remember what a Cherokee elder once told us: “The way to God is not through singing hymns or reading books, it’s by giving life to those who need it.”
For five blessed days, Slipper gave us life in abundance.