The youngsters got off the school bus and were usually home about an hour before I got home. After teaching until five o’clock, I’d change from my bathing suit into street clothes, make some notes for the next meeting of each class, lock the doors and drive to our farm about 12 miles out of town. On this day, freezing rain had left tree limbs hanging low over our lane. It was beautiful, but the icy road was treacherous. I turned in to the driveway and remembered that supper was almost ready in the automatic oven.

Entering the house, I smelled the wonderful aroma of a beef roast. Nancy and Walt had set the table, and we four were soon enjoying our meal. We discussed school, the mail, the happenings at New Haven School and the day’s work. Then Chub blurted out, “Guess what’s in the den!” We all jumped up to go to see.

The den was a tiny room next to Nancy’s bedroom. It had a metal typewriter table, a folding chair, a filing cabinet and shelves of books on two walls. Of course we couldn’t guess what else was in the den on that night. There was a scrap of carpet covering something on the floor. Nancy lifted the corner of the carpet and screamed, “A frozen calf.”

A heifer had dropped her first calf on the cold wet ground and, not knowing what had happened, she headed for shelter. The rain fell and froze an ice crust on her curled-up newborn calf. Chub found it and brought it in. Its only hope of survival was to be thawed out, and that wouldn’t happen in the unheated shed. He removed the throw rugs, wastebasket and other things on the floor of the den and made a nest of gunny sacks.

We went back to finish our supper and to discus the calf’s chances for life. “We’ll drench it as soon as it can swallow,” Chub said. Before bedtime I poured a little whiskey into a bottle with a long slender neck. Chub held the calf’s mouth open while I poked the bottle neck as far down as possible. We spilled part of the whiskey but encouraged swallowing by stroking the animal’s throat. Surely some of it went to its stomach.

“Should we take it to the barn for the night?” I asked. Walt and Nancy immediately voted, “No!” I couldn’t see any problem with harboring a nearly frozen calf that probably would be dead by morning. We fixed a barricade so that if a miracle happened, it couldn’t get out of the den.

About midnight, a bump, bump, bumping woke Nancy. She got the rest of us out of bed. The calf was up, and its head was caught under the typewriter table. We rescued it, put down more gunny sacks, drenched him with a little more whiskey and went back to bed. The calf looked good the next morning. It survived because Chub coaxed another mother cow into adopting the miraculous orphan.

A few weeks ago I wrote about Chub’s having been given whiskey that he didn’t use. When she read it, our Nancy said, “You should have written about the ice-covered calf.” She wanted me to admit that she and I flushed an almost full bottle of Crown Royal down the toilet so she could have the pretty bottle for her room! Later we learned that the calf’s life was saved by some pretty fine medicine!