Calves

Every Tuesday afternoon, the calves begin arriving for the weekly sale at the Westminster Livestock Auction -- six or eight at a time delivered by livestock haulers or a lone calf secured in the back of a pickup.Some of the animals scamper into the receiving pens, kicking and bawling as if to announce their arrival. Others -- just a few days old -- have trouble finding their legs and must be coaxed and prodded from the trucks. Most are black-and-white Holstein bull calves sold for veal because they can't contribute milk.

[What follows deals with certain biological realities, and is intended for mature audiences only. You might not want to let your children or teen-agers read it.]Havre de Grace. -- Last April 4, when we let the big bull out of the yard where he'd spent the winter and turned him in with the cows, he didn't waste much time. Within minutes, he'd bred one cow and was wandering off to see who else was feeling friendly.I found myself thinking about the bull while listening to President Clinton's State of the Union address the other night, but that's getting ahead of myself.

Havre de Grace -- Minute by minute the fall begins. There are flecks of color in the woods. The air chills, condenses, leaves thick morning dew on the grass and takes on an autumnal sharpness and clarity. The swallows have gone. Groundhogs grow fat. An October column looms like the waning moon.But the mood isn't as bright as it should be, to match this brilliant season. Perhaps this is because of all the recent rain? Not likely; the rain has been welcome after a dry summer. It has softened the ground and given a boost to the pastures.

Havre de Grace. -- McDonald's, I read recently, feeds 28 million people a day and buys about 16,000 head of cattle every week to make hamburgers. I thought of that the other day as I sent a rickety old cow down the road to the livestock auction, a single half-ton drop in an endless consumer-bound river of meat.My cow probably didn't end up in a Big Mac, but she might have. I'll never know. Like most farmers, I'm at one end of the production pipeline and the consumer is at the other. We never meet, although we both might enjoy doing so. There are just too many people in between.

Havre de Grace. -- As the trial of one of the alleged slayers of Pam Basu opened in Howard County this week, some of us were fortunate enough to be able to walk in the April sunshine.''April is the cruelest month,'' begins T.S. Eliot's ''The Waste Land.'' It is a famous line, but peculiar, like Eliot himself. Why should April be considered cruel, when the grass is so green and blossoms of impossible colors dance on the cool spring wind? For years this assertion of Eliot's has perplexed his readers, who sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn, wondering what on earth he had against April.

He is a knife, a lithe gray blade slicing the water.She is studious, practicing her perfect leaps over and over and over.In their warm blue world, He and She, two dolphins born last March at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, are getting ready for their public debut. They will get names early next month. And soon they will take a bow at one of the dolphin shows in the light-splashed pools at the Marine Mammal Pavilion.Among the mammalogist/trainers at the aquarium, the baby dolphins have already stolen the show.

Salary: : $30/hour Age: : 49 Years on the job: : 31 How he got started: : Knowing he didn't want to go into the military or on to college, Tony Revels began working at the port of Baltimore as a longshoreman before he graduated from high school. His father also worked at the port as a longshoreman, and the two had a chance to work side by side until his father, Jesse, who has since passed away, retired in 1993. Revels calls that experience "awesome." The job is a union position, and Revels belongs to the International Longshoremen's Association Local 333. Typical day: : "Every day is different," Revels said about his job. He usually works 50 to 60 hours a week, but his days and hours vary and are determined by the number of vessels that come in and out of Baltimore's Seagirt Marine Terminal or Dundalk Marine Terminal.

HAVRE DE GRACE -- We sold a load of steer calves earlier this month, which for me brought on a case of post-harvest depression.Usually, when the calves leave each fall, it's a moment to celebrate. They're a major crop for our farm, and provide an important part of its revenue. And when they've gone, our responsibility for them is over. We know we've done our job well, and have earned the right to relax for a while. It's nice to take the check to the bank, too.For most farmers in our area, this harvest season looks very good.

Shhhhh . With two baby dolphins in the house, not only is Baltimore's National Aquarium asking visitors to keep it down, but the infants have also forced the attraction to reconfigure one of its most popular shows just as tourist season launches. With little ones to consider — to say nothing of their sensitive mothers — the usually boisterous dolphin show, known for splashing and shrieking, has turned into a quiet zone, with hushed music, fewer visitors allowed in at a time and a video documenting dolphin births substituting for most of the noisy acrobatics.

One of two baby bottlenose dolphins born at the National Aquarium in April was found dead in its pool Tuesday morning. A necropsy is being performed to determine the cause. "We don't really know what happened. There was no abnormal behavior. No signs of anything. It was pretty sudden," said aquarium spokeswoman Jen Bloomer. The second calf appeared healthy and was nursing regularly. Mortality rates are high — about 33 percent — for baby dolphins, whether they're born in the wild or in captivity.