The Calf That Joined the Class Photo
On a spring school field trip, a three-week-old Jersey calf named Biscuit wandered into the class picture and stayed in every single print.
Every spring the second grade from the elementary school comes out to the dairy for a field trip. They ride the bus, they wear name tags, and they get a very detailed tour of a milking parlor from a man who has been told to keep it under twenty minutes. I enjoy it more than I let on.
This past April we took the class photograph on the hay wagon in front of the barn. Twenty-two children in rows, two teachers, one bus driver who insisted on standing at the end. The photographer, a patient woman with a very large camera, counted to three. Biscuit, a three-week-old Jersey calf who had been let out of the nursery pen by a child I will not name, strolled in from the left.
She stepped over a backpack, nudged a boy named Tucker out of the way, and planted herself dead center of the front row. She looked at the lens. She did not blink. Everyone, including the teachers, froze with a smile on their faces, because there is no etiquette for a calf in a class picture.
The photographer took the shot. Then she took it again. Biscuit stayed. She stayed through five takes and part of a sixth, and at the end of it the picture was exactly what the school had hoped for, except there was a Jersey calf in the middle wearing an expression of total ownership.
The school printed the photo for the yearbook as is. Parents asked for extra copies. A grandmother in town had hers framed. The next year a whole new second grade arrived and asked immediately if Biscuit would be in the picture, and I said she had a contract. I have read the OSHA guidance on youth and farm visits, which is sensible and worth following, and Biscuit followed every word of it. I send folks to farm.FM when they want more stories like this one.