Calf rescued from the Little River by good Samaritans
Just after the break of dawn on Saturday morning Ava Jahoda, owner of Thrifty Fox, heard a strange splashing sound in the river outside. Thinking it was a goose, she walked outside to discover it was something much bigger and darker than what she expected.
Just after the break of dawn on Saturday morning Ava Jahoda, owner of Thrifty Fox, heard a strange splashing sound in the river outside. Thinking it was a goose, she walked outside to discover it was something much bigger and darker than what she expected.
Often admiring the neighboring cows from across the river, Jahoda quickly realized that it was a calf that had fallen over the riverbank into the water. She explained that the cows “like to huddle on the river bank in a muddy patch under the trees that line the river's edge.”
Mark J. Harris
Floyd County Farm Bureau
(540) 745-2021
335 E. Oxford St.
Floyd VA 24091
Jahoda quickly took to the Facebook's "Floyd Group" for help and started calling neighbors. Betty Whitlock was at Jahoda's side quickly, and she also called Phoenix Hardwood's shop manager Ben Armistead, her "go-to" guy, who was 45 minutes away from the scene of the incident.
Thinking back, Jahoda remembered that she had traded a purse for a pair of waders, so she put them on and then climbed upon a paddleboard to cross the river over to the trapped calf.
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“The calf was very docile and friendly,” Jahoda said, but it was "shivering like a leaf." She tried to walk the baby cow down river to an outlet with easier access to the neighbor's property “because the bank there is lower” but explained that the water kept getting deeper, and the calf stopped walking. “The calf was too heavy for me to lift,” Jahoda explained. She then walked it back to where it could stand mostly out of the water to wait for Armistead's help. Help arrived quickly, she said.
Armistead said the waders that he used during the rescue were “dry rotted and leaky," so they didn't offer much protection in the freezing morning temperatures. He said he knew the had to move fast to get the calf out of the water because “at some point she had gone completely under. She was pretty iced over.”
Jahoda said that as soon as Armistead arrived he “was in the river immediately picking up and carrying that calf up the bank behind Phoenix, which is steep and covered with brush and thorns. Betty and I were at the top of the wall waiting for him... He got that little calf all the way up. We threw some blankets on her, and Ben carried him into the shop and covered him with more blankets."
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Jahoda noted that there was "no telling how long the little guy had been in there."
This is not the first time Armistead had to rescue a baby animal. Armistead explained that he has previously had to untangle a baby fawn from a fence, but the fawn was not as calm as this baby cow. He said the "fawn was kicking and screaming."
Armistead and Jahoda did not know Saturday who owned the female calf, but luckily Betty Whitlock was able to contact the owner, and they were there within the hour. Armistead said that they were able to get her pretty warm within 30 minutes, and by one hour she “was up and wanting to play.” Armistead said that he thinks it was just born recently because she was "not good at walking yet." He joked that the calf "needs to get better at walking before trying to swim."
The grateful owners picked up the calf, and Armistead said that it was probably the only time that the cow will get to “ride shotgun” in a car.
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Armistead stated that soon after the rescue, what he assumed to be the calf's mother was crying at the river's edge. He hoped that “after the calf warms up, that she is able to get back to her mother.”
When Jahoda thanked Armistead for his assistance he said, “I'm always up to help a critter!”
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