Friday, March 28, 1997
Two-headed calf unites Rotan student body
By KEN ELLSWORTH
Senior Staff Writer
ROTAN - Two-faced jokes have been flying with frequency around
the Rotan Independent School District agricultural barn the last
two or three days.
Don't confuse the jokes for flippancy, however, for the students
here are genuinely concerned about the fate of a rare two-faced
female calf born Monday evening on a nearby ranch. The ranch owners,
noting the condition of the calf at birth, donated the animal
to the school.
The calf has two noses, with a total of four nostrils, four
eyes, two tongues, and two mouths.
"We have to feed it two bottles of milk at a time,"
said high school junior J.D. Elrod. "If we don't, it sucks
air from its other mouth."
The animal's two faces emerge from its cranial structure like
a wide-spread, two-pronged fork that begins in the middle of its
skull.
The calf's two noses are separated by about 10 inches. The
back of the animal's head appears to be normal, though, and the
calf is thought to have one single brain stem.
"Other than the head, the calf is a beautiful calf,"
said Norman Fryar, 35, the school's agricultural teacher.
Students have tentatively named the calf Daisy.
By Thursday, Daisy still could not walk, though a calf normally
is able to walk within a few hours of birth. The calf is now suspended
in a sling which supports the calf lightly on its spindly legs
as it attempts to stand.
"She wants to stand. She's putting weight on her legs.
She just cannot quite figure out how to do it," Fryar said,
noting that the calf's legs appeared to be capable of functioning
normally.
"It's not at all that unusual for a normal calf not to
be able to walk after this much time has passed. That is why slings
are available," he said.
Wednesday, the day the calf was brought to the school, the
calf was visited by nearly all the school's elementary and high
school students as she lay on fresh straw in an indoor pen. Other
groups and individuals from the community were also frequent visitors.
Fryar said he received a call from the ranch owners where the
calf was born Tuesday evening. The owners offered the calf to
the school to use educationally.
"When I took my class out there Wednesday morning, I thought
I would be showing them a dead calf, but when we got there she
was kicking," Fryar said.
The group brought the calf back to school and Fryar gave his
agricultural students a choice.
"Shall we keep her alive?" he asked his students.
"Yes!" was the unanimous response, so the calf was given
to the care of the students. They feed the calf, give it antibiotics,
and attend to its other needs.
Other students besides agricultural students have been learning
from the experience too. The school's science teacher had his
anatomy students submit drawings of what they think the calf's
brain might look like. Other classes have also involved the calf
in their studies.
Fryar said the calf was alert and responded to sights and sounds
with curiosity. The calf's two inner eyes were sightless, he said,
and lacked the blinking reflex, an affliction which the students
treated with antibiotics and eye drops.
"She sees with her outer eyes," Fryar said.
He speculated that the calf had begun in its mother's womb
as an identical twin, "But the egg didn't split." He
compared the condition to that of Siamese twins.
Fryar said that the very rare calf's life expectancy would
probably be short, maybe four to six weeks, but he was convinced
the educational experience would be worth it for the students.
"There is no appearance that she (the calf) is suffering.
If she were, I would put her down. I can't stand to see an animal
suffer, but this has given the kids a common goal," Fryar
said. "This is developing some responsibility in the kids,
and some attitudes I haven't seen develop before."
The agricultural teacher said he was concerned that others
might take his students' efforts to maintain the calf in the wrong
way.
"This is not a freak show, that is not the intention,"
he said. "This is an educational experience."
Fryar said now that the novelty of having such an unusual animal
has worn off, care for the calf has become more and more like
the care of any sick calf.
"This is real practical experience. It is not often that
somebody gives you a calf and says you can work with it. And the
kids have been fantastic. They're learning a lot at a very rapid
pace," Fryar said. "They have gotten over the shock
of seeing two faces and they are really doing well. In fact, they
are surprising me. And she (the calf) is really doing well too.
She's fighting. She wants to live."
Wednesday, students J.D. Elrod and Kaleb Goodwin worked with
the calf, trying to get her to stand. As they held her, a single
cry came from a male, adult onlooker.
"Come on girl. Get up!," the man said.
As Goodwin patted the calf, he said he was hopeful, but realistic,
about her survival chances, but admitted, "It sure would
excite me if she did live."
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Copyright ©1997,
Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps Publications
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