Bringing up baby

Published 9:00 pm Monday, August 28, 2006

Cuddling up to a cow? At a fairgrounds full of soft bunnies or affectionate pups, sitting down with a cow might not be the first choice of many. But then, most people haven’t met Charlotte, Cayley Allen’s 1,500-pound baby.

Cayley (right) bottle-fed Charlotte, named for the affectionate spider from Charlotte’s Web, since the time she was an orphaned calf. Bonding with her and training her into her first 4-H show cow when Cayley herself was only 8 years old.

“She’s special. I put a lot of time into her. She’s my baby,” said Allen. “At home, she runs around in the back yard.”

Now Cayley is 13, and in about a week she starts her first week at Arlington High School. Charlotte is 6 now, and after a four-year hiatus while Cayley raised and trained other cows, Charlotte has returned to the Evergreen State Fair with Cayley. Together, they won the championship in the Mature Cow age group, the group affectionately known the “Old Bags.”

Next year Cayley begins the move from her 4-H group, Her-Ang-Dus, into her school’s Future Farmers of America club. She will begin high school activities, make high school friends and begin her journey into young adulthood. All the while Charlotte will be there, in the pastures behind her house, or out back, stomping through the yard.

But for now they are content. And while the 4-Hers rush by, sweeping up the aisles and brushing the cattle, while the visitors walk past, admiring the cows and looking at the ribbons tacked up on the walls, Cayley and her friend Toria Morcom, also 13, sit with Charlotte and let the fair activities hustle by. Charlotte closes her eyes and rests her massive head on Cayley’s cowboy boots, content to be a cow.