Drive - A Memoir 106th Installment
milk
the cows, as I rounded the corner of the barn, “Yowzer!” I
screamed. I had come face to face with the evil monster Holstein
bull. This animal was huge and was the bane of anyone who had to deal
with this biological mutation. When a farmer wanted good milk
production from Holstein cows, he chose the biggest cows. In order to
raise extra big dairy cows, he needed an extra big bull, and we had
the biggest bull in the county. This brute was about six feet at the
shoulder and weighed over two thousand pounds. I slowly backed up the
way I came and stopped by Russ. “The bull is out again,” I
whispered, so the bull wouldn’t hear me.
“Jeeze
Louise, I hate it when this happens,” Russ answered quietly. “Okay,
you go around to the back of the corral and open the pole gate to the
holding pen. I’ll chase the animal around the barn and though the
gate and then you swing the gate shut.”
“First,
let’s find some big sticks for self defense,” I offered. “Better
yet, let’s run get our 22 rifles. We could shoot that monster, but
the bullets would bounce right off.”
“Oh,
you ditz, you can’t shoot the bull,” Then, realizing the
metaphor, he snickered, “Get it ‘shoot the bull.’”
“I
wasn’t ‘shooting the bull,’ I really want to shoot the stupid
bull!” I said through gritted teeth, and I wasn’t laughing.
I
lit out to open the gate and gave Russ a count of twenty while he
rounded the barn whooping and hollering. I ran over and joined him,
thinking two bull drivers were better than one. The bull, startled,
turned and trotted the other way. Then deciding he didn’t want to
go back where he came from, the bull turned on us. We froze. The
Holstein bull lowered its head, pawed the ground, throwing dirt high
into the air, and with blood in its eye came charging at us. We stood
our ground knowing if we turned and ran, with nowhere safe to go, the
bull would out run us and trample us from behind. When the beast got
closer, I did the count down “ready – on three – one – two –
THREE!” We screamed, threw our arms in the air, jumped up trying to
make ourselves seem bigger and then screamed again. Our bluff worked
but only just barely. The bull skidded to a stop only a couple of
feet away. I felt its hot breath and could smell it, or at least I
thought I smelled it; as scared as I was, it could have been I was
smelling me.
The
bull rounded the barn and with the holding pen gate open and the rail
fence to the bull’s left, he had nowhere to go but in the corral.
The bull turned his head high looking back at us, probably realizing
his mistake, and started back.
500 more words tomorrow
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