Mama Red Finds a New Home

She was ten miles away from the only home she’d ever known.  She was in her new pasture, and she was surrounded by grass, glorious grass.

She was content.  This was what I had dreamed of.  And this is just as I found her.

Mama Red comes running!

I spotted her from my brother’s truck as we crested the hill. She lifted her head from eating.  She knew Jamie’s truck and started our way.  She began to run.

(I don’t have to tell you what I began to do.)

You all remember that, back in the summer, my brother, who took care of Mama Red and her three babies for me, told me that he could no longer take care of her.  A lack of rain over an extended period had dried up his pastures, and there was not sufficient food for them to eat.  I’d have to find them a new home.  Otherwise, he’d have to take them to the cattle sale, which is a nice way of saying “slaughter house.”

Melissa and Bren, the two mamas

I panicked.

Enter an answer to prayer.

Enter Melissa, a woman as kind as they come.  My brother tells me she loves animals so, she might let them stay in her house!

Melissa, in an email to me yesterday, told me she’d just come from giving “our” babies some sweet feed.  That thrilled my heart!

My brother delivered Mama Red and her year-and-a-half-old twins and two-and-a-half-year old steer to Melissa’s place about a month ago.  I got to visit them on Thanksgiving in my brother’s truck, cresting that hill and craning my neck to get my eyes on Mama Red and her babies.

Mama Red tells me, "I love it here."

I got out of the truck with a bag of her favorite, Sunbeam white bread.

“Mama Red,” I called out and made my way to her.

She ate all that I could give her.

And then I had to ask her the question.

I had to ask her, “Are you happy here?”

She raised her chin and told me, “I love it here.”

And then I gave her an update on that novel, ONE GOOD MAMA BONE, that I’m writing that honors her.  I told her, “In the Spring, Girl, in the Spring, I’m going to send it to that editor I’ve told you about.”

She sniffed my face and hair and then licked my cheek.  I knew she was thanking me for finding her and her babies a place to live.  And yes, ma’am, a place to live out all their days, too.

All of them.  Every last one.