This three-part installment follows Donna as she and the surrounding community try to solve what has killed her calf. Donna and her wife farmed in Folles, France, with their two children.
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Turns out nothing brings a farming community together like the mysterious death of a calf.
Wednesday
On the morning of January 26th, 2022, I walked through our frost-laden field toward the cows’ new paddock–past ice crystals clinging to the thin twigs of blackthorn trees, among the remnants of thistles encased in ice, through a shallow stream bending fresh blades of grass toward the lake. I opened the gate, whistled, and soon our four heifers appeared and ushered themselves into the self-serve breakfast area.
The six boys were always slow to arrive, so nothing seemed out of order as I began walking into the wooded area where they often slept, protected from the elements. Three boys found their own way while I conducted my search, but three others remained hidden. As I continued walking, I began to feel something wasn’t right. Two more calves appeared, and I led them to the new paddock. But Scaredy was missing.
Something was wrong. Goat Boy was our resident straggler, not Scaredy. They were both born on the same day, but Goat Boy got all the confidence: he went where he wanted when he wanted and stayed as long as he wanted. He let me know when he wanted to be brushed, and he wiggled his bum when I pet his hips on both sides. But Scaredy had never let me touch him; he just couldn’t bring himself to be okay with it. And he was simply not confident enough to be alone; he needed the comfort of the herd. So where was he?
I headed back into the woods, scanning the base of chestnuts and oaks, of bracken fern bunches and bramble bushes.
Then I saw it. I saw him, lying atop fallen leaves in the shelter of a holly tree. Don’t be dead, I commanded, as though I had control. Please don’t be dead.
But he was. As I got closer I saw a large section of his neck was missing. The skin and muscle were gone and his trachea was clearly visible against a backdrop of pale pink flesh bordered by thin, dark red lines glistening in the morning dew. I just stared for a while, uncertain what to think or do. His ear was missing, along with his ear tag. Did someone do this to you and take your tag so you can’t be identified? I lifted his limp head to check his other ear. It was still there, with the bright orange tag in place. Something ate your ear?
I knelt next to him and sighed. “Sorry, bud,” I told him. “Sorry this happened to you.”
I placed my hand on his side and pressed down a little: he was hard. Was it rigor because he’d been dead for a while or was he frozen? I usually saw the cows each day but I didn’t count them, and the temperature had dipped to -6 °C the night before. When did this happen? And what happened? Did he suffer?
I took a couple of photos and began thinking of the administrative and logistical steps to come. I needed to get him from the woods to the house and send paperwork to EDE (the Établissements d’élevage), which tracks the movement of all cattle in France. And I needed to do this on my own, so my wife, Wendy, would never see the body. Things like this are my job because for better or worse: I’m good at compartmentalizing. My feelings have learned to be patient–they know I’ll focus on them when I can.
My mind acknowledges the sadness during difficult moments, but it’s like a gentle whisper in the background while more practical matters occupy the foreground: Can I harvest his meat and organs for dog treats? There’s at least 100 lbs of meat here, plus his tongue, liver, kidney, heart, hooves, stomach lining. The chickens will eat what the dogs won’t, but what would I do with the “leftover” parts? Should I give his head to the chickens? Could I deal with seeing that every day as they worked their way toward finishing? Probably not. Should I crack his head open and just give them the brain? They’d finish that fast and it’d probably be good for them. How long would it take me to process him? Should I make leather from his hide? Could I figure it out as I go along or should I watch a YouTube video first? Is any of this even legal, or do I have to put the entire body under straw by the side of the road so it can be picked up for rendering? What a waste. I don’t want to waste him. I don’t want him to be dead but it makes it even worse if his whole body is wasted. I’m out 300 euros. Does my insurance cover predator losses?
I walked back up to the house and broke the news of Scaredy’s death to Wendy. She cried and asked if I was alright. “Yes,” I told her. “I’m sorry. I know you hate this kind of thing.”
“Yes, but so do you,” she answered.
She’s right. I took a moment, took a breath. “I need to go bring Scaredy’s body up then figure out who to contact,” I told her. “There are things I’m supposed to do but I don’t know what they are.”
I put the Traxter keys in my pocket, hitched the towable wheelbarrow, then drove down to the lake and backed up into the woods. I rolled the wheelbarrow as close to Scaredy as I could, then tipped the front against the ground to assist with loading. Scaredy was small but I knew he wouldn’t be light, and I wouldn’t be able to pick him up.
Scaredy’s body lay in a depression, so I grabbed his front hooves and began dragging him up a slight hill to the wheelbarrow. I had to stop a couple of times to regain my oomph, but eventually I got his forequarters into the wheelbarrow. Then I pushed him from behind, swinging his hindquarters toward the wheelbarrow to scrunch him in. Handling him like that felt disrespectful, but it was the only way I could get him in. I realized he was still flexible and could not have been dead long. It made me feel a little better as I forced his corpse into the wheelbarrow, his head flopping under his chest, his legs askew, to achieve a proper balance so I could tow the wheelbarrow behind the quad without him tumbling out.
I drove back up the field and stopped at the piggery–a small room connected to the large barn by the house. It was designed to hold a hog for family consumption. It was separated into two rooms–one with a sturdy interior door meant to hold the pig, and a narrow room accessible from the exterior door, designed for the homeowner to pour slop into an old sink via a hole in the wall so the human doesn’t have to enter the actual pig sty. We would never have raised a pig in there–it was small and damp, dimly-lit with a concrete floor and a combination of cinder block and stone walls. Instead, it’s where I processed poultry because the low light was less stressful for the birds, there was room for a small stainless steel table, and the floor was sloped to drain outside.
I unhitched the wheelbarrow, rolled it to the piggery door, tipped it down, dragged Scaredy through the exterior door, then arranged and rearranged his body to make the 90° turn through the sturdy door into the small, cold room. Then I closed the internal door, closed the external door, put the Traxter away, washed my hands in the kitchen sink, and sat down with a mug of coffee.
I sent a message to my insurance company inquiring about coverage. I called EDE but no one answered, so I called CDAAS (the Coopérative départementale agricole action sanitaire), which regulates things like mandatory vaccinations and testing. When someone answered, I explained that I’d found a dead calf for the first time on my farm. I was transferred to someone else, and I re-explained that I’d found a dead calf on my farm and wasn’t sure what steps to take next.
The representative was very informative and patient with my French, and agreed to send me an email outlining the procedure. Depending who I’m talking with and the subject matter, I generally understand 40% – 90% of the conversations I have in French. I’m fairly well versed in farm lingo and the woman spoke clearly and slowly, so I was pretty sure I understood what to do. But communicating in writing is preferable because I can use Google Translate and take my time reviewing the content.
When I started the farm business in January 2019, EDE sent me a packet of blank “movement documents” in carbon-copy format with perforated sides to assist with dot-matrix printing. I didn’t even know dot-matrix printers existed anymore, but apparently they’re still used for some administrative functions. Whenever a cow entered or exited our farm, I needed to record a bunch of information on that form (the cow’s tag number, date of birth, parents, originating/destination farm, reasons for entry/exit) then keep a copy for myself and mail the original to EDE. I’d done this many times. According to the email from CDAAS, the first step was to fill out one of the movement documents and send it to EDE.
The second step was to place the calf under some straw near the driveway and arrange a pick-up with the servicing équirrissage company (Atemax) so the body could be sent to a rendering plant. At the time of pick-up, the company is supposed to take possession of the animal’s bovine passport–a document that accompanies the animal throughout its life, tracking its movements. Providing the passport to the équirrissage company closes the final administrative chapter in the animal’s life.
While on the phone, I asked the CDAAS representative if I could harvest the calf’s meat and organs to dehydrate them for my dogs. She seemed to find the question odd, and provided me with an equally-odd response: “I don’t know–maybe you should ask your veterinarian.” I wasn’t concerned about the safety of the meat, just whether harvesting it would be an administratively sound practice. After all, how would the State be certain the calf hadn’t entered the nation’s food supply if I “disposed” of the body myself? This is the minutia my French doesn’t permit me to explore.
Next, I sent an email to EDE explaining I would work on sending the paperwork but my real question was whether I was allowed to harvest the meat and organs for my dogs. The French Government hates waste; there are laws against it. So I invoked the theme of gaspillage in my message, hoping someone would get back to me while I still had time to save whatever was worth saving. I also sent a message to the équirrissage company, asking if they were able to recover part of a carcass, so I could reduce waste but still provide proof of the body.
I continued refreshing my email every few minutes over the course of the next hour. Nothing.
I discovered Scaredy’s body at 8:30 on a Wednesday morning. By now it was 11 and the kids would be home by 12:30. Wednesdays were half-days at school and we were supposed to leave for Limoges around 2:30 so Darwin and Emerson could get their second round of COVID vaccinations. I envisioned myself disemboweling Scaredy in the piggery as the children walked by, wondering where I was and wanting to give me a cuddle. I imagined myself stressed, immersed in the dampness of stone and cinder block, compartmentalization in overdrive, unable to support my children during their final round of vaccinations. It was a big deal and Darwin was looking forward to showing me how brave she could be, how stoic when a needle goes in.
I decided to text Vanessa, our French neighbor who was raised in Folles and studied agriculture. Yohann is her husband and aside from being a member of the chasse, he used to work at the local abattoir. They both know a lot of things and a lot of people.
Vanessa texted me back right away and said Yohann would be home for lunch around noon, and she’d ask him then. I received a follow-up text from her around 12:20 saying he’d stop by around 1pm, after lunch was over.
I was finishing up with Kinky Boots when I received Vanessa’s text. After I had transported Scaredy’s body from the woods to the piggery, I decided I may as well take care of our aggressive Brahma rooster, too. It had already been a bad day, a hard day, a day of death. So I sprinkled some cracked corn on the ground, captured Kinky, brought him to the piggery, killed him, and began processing him into food for our family.
With only 40 minutes before Yohann’s arrival, I quickly placed the five pounds of chicken breasts and legs in a bowl of chilled water, then raced to remove Kinky’s organs to dehydrate as dog treats. All the while Scaredy lay on the floor behind me. It was a bad day, a hard day. I gathered the remains of Kinky’s body and placed them in the dead animal bin.
I washed the processing table, I washed my hands, and Yohann arrived. I thanked him for coming and he asked if he could see the body. There was blood splatter on the wall next to Scaredy’s head. “That’s from a rooster,” I explained, because for a moment I thought he might think I had killed the calf. Yohann gave a nod of acknowledgement and said “D’accord.”
Yohann stared silently at the body for a while, then spoke. “I don’t think it was a boar,” he said. “A boar eats everything… and I don’t think it was a fox–foxes attack from behind…. Not a badger–they’d eat the nose–they like cartilage.” He stared a while longer.
“Maybe a wolf?” I asked him. There had been reports of wolves attacking livestock about 100 kilometers away.
“Maybe…” he answered, nodding his head. “Or maybe a dog.” It was hunting season and sometimes dogs get away from their owners. Scaredy was small, reaching only up to my waist. He was kind of like a sheep without all the wool. Many things could have killed him.
Yohann said he would let the chasse know what happened and see if anyone had anything to share. Then he mentioned the “CHASSE INTERDITE” sign we had erected near the road. Our property was part of a section of land protected from hunting to preserve the nation’s biodiversity. I added a gate to provide easy access to our property from the road, so I included a “no hunting” sign to ensure no one would view that as a place to access our land more easily. In France, in general, members of the chasse are allowed to hunt on others’ property; there are just rules about which direction they’re allowed to shoot in and how close they’re allowed to hunt near people’s houses.
So when Yohann mentioned our CHASSE INTERDITE sign, I couldn’t tell if he was saying it probably wasn’t a dog because hunters know not to come on our property, or if he was saying no one would admit to it because everyone knows they’re not supposed to come on our property. Or maybe he was saying no one would want to help us because we had annoyed them with the sign.
I thanked Yohann for stopping by and asked if he knew whether I could salvage the meat and organs for the dogs. “I don’t know,” he said, “but I doubt it.”
“But it’s such a waste,” I told him.
“Yeah, it is,” he responded. “But when I worked at the abattoir, if a cow came in and didn’t have its paperwork in order, the whole thing would go to the rendering plant. There’s a lot of waste.”
I asked him how long he thought I could keep the body in the piggery while waiting for an answer from EDE. “Three, four days maybe?” he answered. I really hoped I wouldn’t have to wait that long.
As he opened his car door, Yohann either said he’d stop by later that evening or that he’d contact me with an update. I didn’t know which and I didn’t need to know. Wendy and I both grew accustomed to not knowing exactly what was going on. There was no real need to clarify: either Yohann would come by later or he wouldn’t, and either we’d hear from him or we wouldn’t.
I went in the house, gave the kids a welcome-home cuddle, and used the FoodSaver to shrink-wrap Kinky’s breasts, legs, and thighs. Then I changed my clothes and prepared to drive to Limoges with my family.
Shortly before we left, my phone rang. It was Vanessa. She said a lot of words.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t understand,” I told her.
She said more, slightly-different words.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “It’s hard for me on the phone. I’m gonna get Wendy because her French is better.”
Vanessa laughed a little and tried again, this time with different words. And this time, I understood.
“Don’t do anything with the body,” she said. “Leave it alone.”
She went on to explain that Yohann had sent my photo to the OFB (Office français de la biodiversité), and they said it could’ve been a wolf attack, so they wanted to come take a look. She added that a wolf can travel 200 kilometers in one night.
“I understand now, thank you,” I told her. “I will leave the body alone.”
“Yes, leave the body alone,” she repeated.
Now by this time, I had partially informed the kids of the day’s events. I was dealing with Kinky Boots when they arrived home from school, so they knew something was up. Normally I would welcome them home with a kiss and a cuddle, and I wasn’t around to do that.
They knew Kinky and Blossom had fought, and I had told them I might need to cull Kinky. So they weren’t surprised or even particularly disappointed when they learned I couldn’t do cuddles because I was busy processing him. In fact when Emerson saw pieces of chicken chilling in a bowl he said “Is that Kinky Boots?” I confirmed and he said “Okay!”
As the kids buckled their seatbelts, I told them Scaredy had been attacked by a predator. Emerson gasped. Darwin very calmly said “He must be scared of everything, with his name, Scaredy.” The fact that he had died didn’t phase her. I hadn’t planned to tell them at all; they didn’t know how many calves we had, and Scaredy wasn’t a favorite because he always stayed away from them. So they never would’ve missed him. But I had already told them “He wants to talk about something” when they asked why Yohann had come over. And now, someone from OFB was going to show up at the house to talk about it too. I decided it was better to let them know what was happening.
And I’m glad I did because it made the hours and days to follow much easier.
My phone rang as I was driving to Limoges. It was Yohann calling to re-confirm that someone from OFB was planning to stop by our house later in the evening to view Scaredy’s body.
“Leave the calf alone,” he told me.
It was as though the entirety of the neighbor’s household knew I had poor comprehension and was making a concerted effort to ensure I did-not-touch-the-body. I can just imagine the conversation between Vanessa and Yohann.
Yohann: Did you tell Donna the OFB is coming?
Vanessa: Yes, and I told her to leave the body alone.
Yohann: Did she understand you?
Vanessa: I think so but I don’t know for sure. I can never really tell.
Yohann: I’d better call her again.
Wendy and I continued driving to Limoges for the kids’ vaccination. The phone rang again. This time it was an OFB agent letting us know he was planning to come over to see the body. He asked if 4pm would work for us. We explained we probably wouldn’t be back from Limoges until 4:30 and asked if he could wait until then. He couldn’t, so we told him how to get to the piggery so he could do what he needed to do.
We arrived at the clinic around 3:30 and both children were fully vaccinated 20 minutes later. We rushed home in an effort to catch the OFB agent before he left. We really wanted to talk to him to get his opinion on what had killed Scaredy.
When we pulled into the driveway, we saw three agents dressed in gray crowded around the back of a van with the tailgate open. I was the first one out of the car and as I approached, I saw Scaredy had been dragged back out of the piggery and onto the driveway. I immediately returned to the car and asked Wendy to bring the kids in through the barn so they wouldn’t see him. Knowing he had died is one thing; gazing at a gaping hole in the throat of a calf is another.
After Darwin and Emerson were safely inside, Wendy and I approached the OFB agents. They had already taken samples from the body and were working together to complete paperwork. As we stood waiting, we noticed they all carried pistols and handcuffs. They really were the biodiversity police. Although adorned in somewhat-imposing attire, they also wore smiles and were quite amicable.
One of the agents dragged Scaredy back into the piggery. Another proceeded to ask us questions about how old Scaredy was, how/when/where I found him, my business information, etc. Another stepped away from the crowd and looked out at our property. I approached him with my borderline-obsessive question regarding harvesting Scaredy’s meat and organs for the dogs. He seemed surprised but not disturbed by the question.
“What would you do with the body?” he asked.
“I don’t know, maybe bury it?” I responded. “I asked Atemax if they could pick up a partial carcass but they haven’t responded.”
The agent explained that by law, a person can only dispose of a carcass weighing less than 40 kilograms. The OFB had estimated that Scaredy weighed 80.
“How much do you want to take from him?” the agent asked.
“All of it,” I responded. “Otherwise it’s a waste.”
He chuckled. Apparently he thought I just wanted to take a little meat for the dogs. Meanwhile, I couldn’t imagine suffering the horror of cutting into Scaredy’s bloating little body unless I was going to garner every last bit of usable material.
“If I remove the organs and meat,” I continued, feeling a little serial killerish, “he’ll weigh less than 40 kilograms.”
The agent smiled and shrugged.
“If you think it’s best for me to just have him picked up by équirrissage, I’ll do that,” I told him. I have zero interest in breaking the law for dog treats. He told me he thought that would be best.
I walked back over to Wendy and the other agents. I signed a couple of papers and we asked what they thought had killed Scaredy.
“I don’t know,” one of the agents replied. “We just collect the information and pass it on, then the specialist makes a determination.” Turns out their supervisor usually conducted those types of investigations but he was home sick with COVID.
After all the questions had been asked and answered, it was time to bring the agents to the scene of the crime. Daylight was waning, so I offered to drive them down in the quad.
“Nah, he’s scared of ATVs,” one of the agents said, nodding toward another.
I explained that the Traxter was a side-by-side, more like a little car. I opened the root cellar door to show it to them and they immediately commented on how cool it was. The two younger agents climbed in the bed of the Traxter and their colleague sat up front.
“He’s fat,” one said, “so he gets the front to himself.”
On the way down to the woods, the agent next to me said how great the Traxter would be for collecting wood and asked me how much it cost. “About 15,000€,” I told him, doing my best to remember how much I had paid more than two years ago. The agent yelled the figure back to his colleagues.
I parked the Traxter down by the lake, then walked back into the woods where I had found Scaredy. The agents looked around and asked if the fence had been disturbed. I told them it hadn’t. They asked if I’d seen a badger burrow nearby. I asked what that looked like and then told them no, I hadn’t. They told me they didn’t see signs of a struggle, like drag marks or evidence of hoof action. One agent suggested that perhaps Scaredy had been killed, but it’s also possible that a scavenger began eating his throat after he had already died.
My stomach dropped. That had never even occurred to me. And if that was true, then it meant his death was my fault–that I had missed an illness or injury.
The agents set up a couple of trail cameras to surveil the area and said they’d be back to pick them up in a couple of weeks. Two agents piled back into the Traxter, while one walked ahead to take care of closing the gate–but not before snapping a couple pictures of the “fat guy” in the Traxter.
Wendy and I asked the agents when they thought we might receive the results of their investigation. Weeks? Months? They literally had no idea. It all depended on the supervisor’s workload and recovery from COVID.
I left Scaredy in the piggery that night, unsure what would become of him but pretty certain I’d end up loading him into the wheelbarrow again and placing him by the side of the road. I kept thinking about how and when he had died. I realized that I had dragged his body up a hill to get him to the wheelbarrow, but the OFB had not seen those drag marks. So perhaps something had dragged him the night he died. Perhaps there was a struggle but the ground was frozen so no hooves or paws had penetrated the earth.
I worried about the five remaining calves. If it was a predator, would it return? Goat Boy was even smaller than Scaredy, and presumably more vulnerable since he liked to venture off on his own. And what if Scaredy died because it was too cold outside? Would the calves be better off in the woods snuggled together? Or should I try to work in the dark to get the concrete building ready for them? Would they even be better off inside, with its masonry walls that radiate dampness and circulate stale air?
The concrete building was a somewhat-dilapidated structure near the house that was split into two sections. One was a large sheltered space with part of the wall missing and a portion of the roof supported by an acrow prop. The other section housed chickens before we bought the property and had remained filled with poop, trash, and spiderwebs for the past three years.
I did not sleep well.
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Learn more about Donna on our Contributors’ Page.
(Photos by the author)
