Page 1 of Cabins Cows Critics
Chapter one
Connor
WELCOME TO THE RANCH OF MOOS, MEN AND MISFITS
Whenmytruckflippedon an old dirt road during one of the largest storms I’d ever seen, I never expected it to lead to me finding my new home. Yet here I am, over a decade later, still living on the Beaker Brothers Ranch after they took me in, and I couldn’t be happier.
“Miss Moo decided to roll around in the mud,” Skye, the young farmhand, calls, and I look up and see him with his new bright pink hair, leading the young heifer toward me by a rope. Her speckled coat is covered in mud, and a clear look of joy rests on her face. Okay, so I see joy. Most people only see a cow.
“I’ll take care of her,” I say, grabbing my hat and leaping over the cuddle cove railing. It’s where I work on the ranch. I mean, sure, I help out in other areas, but this is my place. I helped build it. This and my cabin that’s positioned not far behind it for easy access to all the cute and cuddly baby animals and the mini Highlands. Those are my favorites, next to Lulu, my newpygmy goat. And this one actually likes me, unlike Cuddles, who started with pure hate and has finally settled on a resounding indifference to me. Little fucker still loves Dean though.
“Great, because Chewie is in the pool, there’s a goat on the roof, and I have no idea where Lulu is.”
He covers his mouth with one hand, like he didn’t mean to say that last part.
I try not to laugh. Chewie is a llama who, no matter how hard we try to keep him inside his pen, manages to escape and get into the pool that the Beaker Brothers installed a while back. It’s a pool, but really it looks like a pond. It has both real and fake rocks making up a waterfall feature at one end, and thankfully, it’s heated, or we’d be pulling out an ice cube the shape of a llama instead of merely a wet one.
“The goat will come down when Dean or Nial feeds the others, and Lulu is in the cuddle cove with the kids.” Two baby goats that are only a few months old but already twice the size of her. “I caught her wandering by about an hour ago when she should have been in my cabin.”
“Nice. Well, I guess it’s good she knew to come right to you.”
“She’s not supposed to be out. She’s supposed to be in my cabin. Did you forget to close my door again?”
“You left your window open.”
“She jumped?”
He shrugs. “I guess.”
“You’d better get Chewie,” I say, and Skye jogs off. I circle around the back of the mini barn that sits directly behind the cuddle cove, and sure enough, the side window of my tiny cabin just past it is wide open. Positioned conveniently below it is an old whiskey barrel. It’s used mostly for decoration, but when we host movie nights or late-night cuddle sessions, it’s a great place to pop a few lanterns to create a warm, cozy glow.
I keep her with me most of the time when I’m working in the cuddle cove, but the weather is getting colder, and she’s so small, so I thought she could stay snuggled up in her bed in my cabin today. I guess she had other ideas. It’s probably not a bad idea for her to get used to being with the mini Highlands and other baby animals we use in the cuddle cove. The first pygmy goat the Beaker Brothers got is a big hit with the kids and adults who visit the ranch. It was a rescue. Basically, all the animals that aren’t milking cows on the ranch are. That’s what this place is all about. Part dairy farm, part animal sanctuary.
The ranch is run by Dean and Nial Beaker, two brothers who took it over from their gramps years ago. They’ve got another brother who plays Banana Ball and a sister, but they hardly visit anymore. Maybe once or twice a year. It’s okay. It’s not like we need the help. We’ve got this place well handled. Perry is the main ranch hand and has been on the ranch since their gramps ran it. He knows probably more than all of us combined, and he lives with his wife, Sally-May, in a container home that’s partially connected to the main house. Skye lives in town in a studio above old Selma’s dance studio but spends more than a few nights in one of the rooms in the big house. Atlas is our resident horse whisperer and nudist. Dean made sure his trailer was as far from the guest cabins and the main house as it could be and reminds him weekly to keep his pants on when in line of sight of the public.
Then there is the new guy, who Nial refers to as his royal highness. He’s a cocky twenty-year-old kid from the farm next door who helped out for a few months after Dean broke his leg last year. Seems like he likes the ranch, though, because he still comes around all the time.
But that’s what Beaker Brothers does. It reels you in, makes you feel like you’ve found a place to belong. At least that’s what it did for me.
I’m not great with people. Cows, on the other hand, seem to get me.
That’s the reason I’m here at all. I was supposed to be blowing through Bellerelle, just like I blew through every other town before it. I made a point not to stay in one place too long. With technology the way it is, someone was bound to figure out who I really was sooner or later, so I left before they could. But then fate put me in the path of Beaker Brothers Ranch.
I’d been driving for hours when the storm hit. I made the stupid decision to try to drive through, expecting it to pass over quickly. It didn’t. And when something darted out in front of my truck, I swerved and flipped it, skidding on the roof along the muddy road, stopping half in a ditch. I stared out into the poorly lit road, upside down, strapped into the driver’s seat of the old pickup truck as the rain beat down on the rusting metal underbelly. The wind whipped through the broken windows, and my eyes began to focus, and what I found was a calf, now lying in the road, head tilted my way, mooing at me as if to tell me to get my ass out of the truck and take it someplace warm. That’s what I was sure it was saying, anyway. I could have had a concussion.
But I climbed out and then carried the thing to the closest farmhouse with lights on. The Beaker Brothers Ranch.
I agreed to stay for a few nights; my truck was going to take at least that long to beat out the dents and replace the window and windshield glass. Plus, I wanted to keep an eye on the calf, make sure it was fitting in with the other cows, but the storm had caused some pretty big damage, and so I stayed longer to help get it all put back together. Then someone from the Bellerelle post came out to do a story on the calf I saved. I nearly ran then and there, but they had no clue who I was either and no interest in finding out. They just wanted to meet the miracle calf that survived the wildest storm in one hundred years. I guess beingon the road for years had taken my polished silver spoon look and flipped it on its head, making me look basically just like every other cowboy out there.
After they posted the story in their local small-town paper, the ranch had loads of people wanting to come out to meet Betty, named after the storm that brought her into our lives. So, I built a small sectioned-off area outside the barn they used to keep the younger cattle when not feeding in the blue barn or housing with their mothers. I filled the fenced indoor area with soft straw, so people could sit and pet her. Turns out people love petting cows, and the cows love it, too. Most of them. After that, we had people showing up every weekend. We filled three donation tins in a month, and that’s when I knew this could be something amazing, not just for people visiting, but to help fund the care of all the quirky animals the ranch seemed to attract.
Betty is still one of the most gentle, cuddly cows we have here on Beaker Brothers, too. The outdoor cuddle cove is so big now that it has sections set aside for some of our larger lovelies like her and Miss Milky, the huge American White Park, and her new calf, Miss Moo. Plus, a separate zone for the babies and the mini Highlands. Those guys are the most upkeep, what with all the washing, the brushing, and the blow-drying. They stay in the mini barn when the day is done, while the other calves return to bed with their mothers up in the main barn. They’ve got a more complex hair plan than I do, but then again, that’s not hard. I basically twist my mess of dirty blond hair into a knot at the back of my head and call it a day. It’s hidden under my cowboy hat most the day anyway, so who really cares if it’s a bit of a mess?
“Come on, Miss Moo, time to give you a bath.”
I lead her around the front of the cuddle cove and up to the large barn. It’s the biggest of the four on the ranch and sits halfway between the cove and the milking barn up by the house.
I tie Miss Moo up in a pen inside.
