Vet Among the Pigeons by Gillian Hick Read Free Book Online Page B

my hopes.
    ‘Okay,’ I said, resignedly facing the inevitable. ‘But, I’ll need you to help, so.’
    You wouldn’t have died of excitement with the monosyllabic conversation that followed between us. I just about got out of him that his name was Declan and that he lived in Dun Laoghaire. The nearest he had come to cattle, until now, was looking out the window of the garage where he was serving his apprenticeship. In his favour, he was at least six feet tall and looked as though he worked out most nights of the week. I carefully injected the local anaesthetic under the rim of bone that covered the nerve supply while he held determinedly onto the metal tongs as the bullock tried in vain to whip his head away. As I worked under Declan’s scornful gaze, I was relieved that, so far, everything seemed to going quite smoothly, considering the odds. Having waited a few minutes for the local anaesthetic to take effect, it came to the part where I placed the blades of the crange around the enormous horns. I gradually pulled the handles open as far as I could, but this came nowhere near wide enough to get anywhere near the base of the horn. I pulled again and although I managed to open them a centimetre or two wider, it was still nowhere near wide enough to do the job.
    Eventually, still trying to appear calm and in control, I jumped down off the crush and had to stand on one handle and pull with all my might to open up the blade until the handles were at a one hundred and eighty degree angle. With the instrument locked open at full stretch, I just about managed to pull the blades down to the base of the over-sized horn at an angle that I hopedwould do the job.
    By this stage, Declan was looking totally bored with the whole process and glanced repeatedly at his watch while muttering to himself and shuffling his feet in the mucky gravel.
    Grasping the handles of the crange in my hands with my arms at full stretch, I attempted to close the enormous jaws as the bullock stood, happily ignorant of the entire proceedings . But with the handles locked open, try and try as I did, nothing happened. No matter what angle I pulled from, nothing budged and I came to the realisation that, yet again, I was making a total mess of the job. Declan’s bored expression did nothing to encourage me, but I knew that without help I was going nowhere.
    ‘Would you mind,’ I began as humbly as I could under the circumstances, ‘giving me a bit of a hand closing this?’
    ‘You want me to help?’ he asked incredulously.
    ‘Yes, if you wouldn’t mind,’ I laughed, as casually as I could. ‘You see, the horns are really very big and it’s perfectly normal to need a bit of help with this sort of thing …’
    I stopped abruptly, looking at the disbelief in his face.
    ‘What exactly do you want me to do?’ he asked ungraciously.
    ‘Well, if you could just help me close the handles,’ I replied, hopping down from my perch and deftly tying a rope halter over the bullock’s head and attaching it to the crush before Declan could change his mind.
    ‘You want me to cut them off, you mean?’
    ‘Well, no, not exactly,’ I replied as he raised his eyes to heaven. ‘If you just pull one handle and I’ll pull the other.’
    ‘Oh, get down out of there and I’ll do it,’ he told me, sighing deeply.
    Burning with shame, I stepped down, balancing the crange on the horn until he was ready to take it.
    ‘Just push it down a bit further,’ I called to him as he readied himself to cut, trying to restore some control to the situation.
    ‘Do it yourself if you want to,’ he retorted, silencing me.
    I said nothing as he grasped both handles, one in either hand and tried to close the vast jaws. Taking a deep breath, he clenched his muscled and heaved and heaved, but nothing happened.
    I had mixed feelings as I was secretly delighted that he couldn’t do it either, but on the other hand I would gladly have been humiliated if it would have put an end to