Picture this:
I stand in my living room, early June 2005, in my best baggy Bermuda shorts (I love Bermuda shorts), drinking cold mint “tea”. My wife and kids are several states away, on vacation. I feed all the animals at 5:00, myself after, and get ready to sit down to do some homework, then decide, by way of general procrastination, to step out onto the screen porch and get a good look at the view west and my little Dexter bull, Samson, at the far reach of my farthest field, just inside my view to the left. I am pleased with him, and myself for finding him and fetching him to the farm. He is a reserve champion of his breed, and looks it. I like looking at him. He is a bit … regal. A little above me, certainly.
He appears to be doing something odd.
Backtracking a little.
We decided not to poll any of the heifers, when we started down the path of raising Irish Dexters, because we liked the look, and felt they were much better suited to defend themselves and their calves when left on pasture. It created some issues for us, but that’s a story for another day.
In the case of Samson, our bull, we decided that horns were not something we wanted to deal with in addition to his somewhat-more-aggressive nature. This was a good choice.End of backtrack.
It seems like he might be stuck in the fence.
I get the binoculars and look more carefully. Turns out he has inserted his head — his snout, really — into one of the squares of the sheep fence.
He is rocking it (his head) back and forth, and seems to be in no distress, but it is odd behavior for a cow. Maybe scratching his chin? His nose? I pull a chair around, set up my tea, and continue to watch. Odd behavior often means illness or some kind of trouble.
Well.
As I am watching, the square hole in the fence is getting bigger, more rectangular; vertical wires sliding a little bit farther apart with every swing of his head. It takes me a moment to process this. It’s like watching a fish put an angler’s hook under a log, or the moment in a cartoon just before the canary pries all the cat’s fingers off the ledge.
I set down the binoculars and look away for a second. Just one second. Truly.
When I look back, he has wedged his shoulders and one leg into the hole and is squirming the rest of his body through. I shout and run back into the house, rapidly throwing on my shirt and rubber boots, and grabbing my cow stick (an old white oak jo that also helps with goose wrangling).
Backtracking again.
The adjoining pasture holds the breeding stock for a small Black Angus operation, about 30 cows and one bull. I have never paid much attention to them. It is a large-ish pasture by Willamette Valley foothills standards; eighty acres or so with a small stream flattening out into marsh near the center. Rolling low hills; several coppices of blackberry and creek willow scattered throughout. The cattle are large, around 1800 pounds, and the bull is much larger, 2400 pounds or more and six feet at the shoulder.
Irish Dexters are the smallest breed of cattle that are not dwarfs of a larger breed. My cows went around 500 pounds; Samson was possibly 600 if you put your thumb on the scale. They look very like Black Angus cattle, except for their size and inquisitive temperament.
End of second backtrack.
By the time I can see him again, having climbed the fence mid-run, waded the stream and run up and over the hill, he has squared off with my neighbor’s bull. Samson is all business, pawing at the ground, bellowing and snorting like he is about to breathe fire and god help you if you get in the way. Exactly like bulls in the movies do before they charge. Except, he is a tiny version.
Standing about forty feet from him, across a clearing the cows have made, like kids at an after-school fight, stands a massive Black Angus bull, looking bemused and formidable.
Everything I have ever heard about handling cattle comes back to me in that moment:
“They have to know you are bigger than they are.”
“You have to look them in the eye and make them back down.”
“Don’t let them take advantage of you.”
“Be confident.”
“Don’t let them charge; make the first move.”
I understand in an instant that I am going to die in this place, mashed into the orchard grass.
I push into the little crowd of cows, forcing my way through with swings and jabs of my stick, and step out into the empty circle. Samson ignores me and bellows, ferocious and untamed. The other bull looks at me curiously. I swing my stick with menace (I hope) and try to look big. I turn to face Samson and step deliberately toward him, swishing my stick, thinking about anything but the bull standing behind me. Samson bellows again, sort of around me at the bull, then a miracle happens. He turns and bolts, runs around in a circle to the other side of the crowd and tries to mount a cow. His hooves don’t even reach the top of her rump. We all laugh.
Okay. We don’t laugh. (I don’t know, maybe the cows do, but I’m too busy hyperventilating from my near-death experience.) I start the long process of chasing Samson back to his home pasture, which involves quartering him back to the nearest gate (keeping him away from the cows, and he’s faster than me (but tires more easily)), then down the main road to the road to my farm, then down the driveway and into the barn. He is truculent and brazenly unintimidated, like a scared kid caught smoking a cigar.
I spend the rest of the day repairing fence, and thinking about cows, and bulls, and how foolish the “keeping” of them really is. How foolish I am. The cows are content, watching me work while they chew their cud.
