That's a Loada Bull!

 

I just saw a video 'short' that reminded me, no matter how fond my memories are of my younger days on the Queens Line, it wasn't all daisies and wild strawberries on the farm.

The fella in the video had a gate slammed into his face by a young bull running through it while the gate was still unchained. Then the bull unceremoniously ran over him and rolled him in the mud and manure.

Yep, been there, but a little different. During dehorning and castrating, I was the rear end guy. That was for the young guys that healed better. Dad and George Olmstead (that year) took care of the head end. That was the business end of the bull. I took care of the end of a bull that made the business end of a bull the business end of a bull. Well, 99 percent of the time. There was 1 percent of the time the end of the bull I took care of was the business end of the bull. The rest of the time it made the regular business end the business end. Am I making any sense here? My goodness, in this day and age I'd hate for someone to get offended and all that entails. 'entails'? Get it? 'End Tails'? I made a funny...

Anyway, I had finished my job on my end, and the head crew had finished their job on their end and the bull was released and gone.

That's where it all went South.

I was in the back end of squeeze and the headgate was open. I was facing the headgate. Maybe I was going out for a drink. I don't remember. All I remember was a call of "LOOK OUT!" from behind, and I turned around to see a bull coming straight for me. Not the head down kind of bull. Nope, that's fer amateurs. The head up kind of bull with his front hooves a foot off the ground and tucked under his chest.

Yeah, that kind.

He hit me square in the chest with his anvil of a head, and knocked me flat as a pancake in the squeeze. That was, with precious little detrimental effect on himself that I was able to perceive from my vantage point on my back in the sh*+ on the floor, that still wasn't very soft even with its somewhat deep and very fresh and pungent layer of organic padding.

You know that adage, 'add insult to injury'? Well, he kind of did it in reverse. The insult was mostly getting knocked down in the left behinds of his consorts. The injury came when he stomped on me in four places while I was already laying in a deep heap of hooey. Fortunately he missed my face and my own... er... 1% business end... but he stomped on both my thighs, my one frontal kidney area, and my opposite shoulder.

Then he was gone.

Scots are tough sunzaguns, so we invariably survive things that would certainly kill lesser men, but we're not exactly stupid gluttons fer punishment either; I was back on my feet in a flash, hanging on to the upper rails of the squeeze for dear life in case any other bulls saw his path to freedom and tried to join him. At my expense.

No, any self-respecting Scotsman knows he's supposed to die on the battlefield, not in a sloppy bed of cowsh*+, so I wasn't letting that insult happen to me.

Reeling there with the wind knocked out of me and shaking my head and trying to catch my bearings, my momentary leisure break was brought to a swift end by George bellowing at me, "What's the matter?! Git out there and git after him!"