ST. AUGUSTA, MINN. -- It was early for Bob Klaverkamp to be getting home Monday, about 4 p.m. and still light out as he reached the gravel intersection a half-mile from his Stearns County dairy farm.

Something in the brush caught his eye.

"I got out of the truck to check it out," he said. "Then I heard a little whimper."

About 7 feet from the road's edge, he found a baby's car seat wedged against the base of an oak tree and covered by a pink blanket. A small duffel bag lay next to the bundle.

"I opened the blanket, and there was a baby inside," Klaverkamp said.

He went to his truck, called 911 on his cell phone, then returned to the baby, gathering her in his arms and taking her into the warm truck.

It was about 40 degrees at the time.

"I touched her fingers, and they weren't cold," he said. "She was holding my finger, a very sweet, very nice little baby. She was very quiet, with once in a while a little whimper.

"I talked to her while I waited for the ambulance to come. 'How are you doing? Are you OK? Yes, you're OK. A good little baby.'

"I told the 911 operator, 'I want to keep her.' "

Authorities are trying to find the parents of the baby girl, or whoever left her along the remote township road about 60 miles from the Twin Cities and not far from Interstate Hwy. 94.

She is white, a little more than 6 pounds and believed to be 3 to 14 days old, Chief Sheriff's Deputy Bruce Bechtold said.

He had no idea how long she was out in the cold, but her body temperature was fine when she was checked out at St. Cloud Hospital.

"She couldn't have been out there long," Bechtold said. "She wasn't hungry. The nurses at the hospital tried to feed her, but she didn't want anything."

The baby was placed with a foster family Tuesday afternoon, Bechtold said.

The duffel bag found with her contained a full bottle, formula and diapers, he said, but there was no note and no identification. "Nothing trying to explain who the parents are, who the baby is," he said.

The area where the baby was left is brushy and tree-lined, and the road is not heavily traveled, neighbors said.

"It wasn't in the best place to leave a baby if you wanted it found," he said, and the bundle would have been difficult to spot as soon as the twilight diminished. "But it wasn't in the worst place to be either."