flashback

When I was in highschool and knew next to nothing about agriculture except that if you planted seeds in the ground they would grow and that cows were mammals, I went as an exchange student to Germany. My host family lived in a similar small townish sort of place like where I lived in the States, but one time, we went hiking in the Alps for the weekend. We went to this famous park with a huge lake and hiked up the side of this mountain all day long. In the afternoon, we came to the small Alpine cabin where my host mom's friend spent the summer with his cow.

We were excited to learn when we got there that said cow was about to have a baby. All evening while we chatted and had dinner the cow labored. The sun went down, and in this cabin and barn there was no electricity, so by the light of the kerosene lamp we watched Dieter check on his cow. He realized that the cow was having problems and after much feeling and looking with a flashlight, I remember this guy deciding to give the cow a cesearian section. I remember him cutting her open - between her vagina and her udder - the blood shining in the lamp light and I remember the calf coming out and laying on the straw.

I know now that this memory can totally not be true. For one thing, while a cow can have a c-section, the cow is cut open on the left side not between the vagina and the boobs like one would cut a human woman. Also, some guy in a hut with no electricity would not preform surgery on a cow. The cow needs to be numbed or sedated or, I dunno, have 10 guys sit on her. More than likely he would cut the calf up inside the cow and take it out in pieces - gross but much much safer for the cow. I wonder now what really happened. Did he reach inside the cow with both arms and turn the calf so it could be born? This would account for the blood. Did he cut it up and my memory has made the calf born alive? I'm not sure, but this very lucid experience leads me to question the capacity of the human memory. I wonder how many other people have had the similar experience of a vivid memory etched in their mind that they know or later discover is almost certainly false.

In case you were wondering here are pictures of a c-section on a cow:
http://www.acvs.org/AnimalOwners/HealthConditions/FoodAnimalTopics/CesareanSection/