Greedy Buttercup

This past winter my cow, Buttercup, suddenly got sick and God taught me some lessons in it.

One day my sister, Niklanna, and I went to go out and milk our cows, Buttercup and Violet. We opened the barn door and I realized that our cows had gotten out of their pen and had eaten most of our grain. We got pretty startled and chased them back into their pen. We then noticed that Mikey, our bull, and Buttercup were already showing signs of sickness and they had extremely watery stools. We went to go check on how much they had eaten, and we realized that they had eaten fifty pounds of grain (their usual portion is a few pounds)! We think Buttercup ate most of it. We cleaned up the barn and milked the females. That night when we went to separate the calves, Buttercup was acting very weird. She didn’t want to come into the barn, so I had to pull her in with all my might.

The next morning she was sitting/laying down and couldn’t get up. She tried to stand, but every time she tried she fell because she didn’t have enough strength. I was pretty discouraged because I was sort of hoping she would get better by morning. During the day we kept checking on her and giving her molasses water to give her strength, but she grew steadily worse. Finally we decided to call a vet to do an emergency ranch call, but they couldn’t come out immediately. After Momma made some phone calls she called us children and we went into the living room to pray and ask what’s God’s will for us to do. After we finished praying Momma went out to check on her. When she came back in she told me that she had died. It sure startled me because I was expecting that she would live. But when you are walking with God you find a lesson in everything, and here are the lessons God taught me:

1. “Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful; and the end of that mirth is heaviness.”* (Proverbs 14:14) When someone is drunk they are happy at the moment, but the next day they are sick. Even as Buttercup was happy at the moment she was eating grain, but the end was death! And she didn’t know it was coming.

2. Butttercup was a very pushy and selfish cow (which means she was the boss of everyone or the alpha cow), so she got most of the grain while Violet got very little because she got shoved out of the way. Violet was the humble one, so she got blessed. Buttercup died because she was the pushy one and got punished.

—Isabella, age 12

“Finally brethren whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”* (Philippians 4:8)