My Pet Bull~Calf
In the summer of 1958, I joined the 4-H club, the agriculturally-oriented youth club similar to Scouts. 4-H has an inspired guiding principle: Learn by Doing, which often means giving a young boy or girl the bonding, real-life experience of raising an animal. So, this helpful Dutch farmer who’d showed me how to milk cows gave me a week-old, black & white Holstein bull-calf to care for. I christened him Bobby.
Caring for a bull-calf? I was nursing a 90-pound baby. I’d hold up his baby-bottle (a one-gallon pail of milk), and he’d drink it dry just like he was fed by mommy. He probably thought I was mommy (later, he realized I was his brother). Broken-hearted Mommy, of course, was reluctantly donating Bobby’s milk to the public.
Bobby became family, like our dog Toby. Wearing my white cowboy hat, jeans, and rubber boots, I'd sprint across the field from our house to meet him. Toby would race ahead, barking, to announce we were coming, and Bobby would hear the noise, trot over to the fence, lick my face with his ten-inch tongue, then suck on my fingers, as I gave him big hugs and inhaled the earthy smell of his thick, oily hide. Toby would jump all over both of us, barking and yelping.
The image of a boy and his dog was in the air: Disney’s Old Yeller had just come to the cinema, Lassie and Rin Tin Tinwere on TV, and I was a boy with a dog and a calf.
Bobby was bright. Eager to please me, he quickly learned to stand and walk straight, so I entered him into the PNE (Pacific National Exhibition) agricultural show in Vancouver, all washed and combed and oiled and loved. As we milled around in the smelly dirt corrals with dozens of other mooing calves and cows and bulls, my brain was dizzy, eyes flying left and right. I’d never been in such vibrant, immersive air: tinny speakers blaring, crowds cheering, BBQ aromas mixed with the smell of cow dung, cowboys and cowgirls in bright red rodeo costumes riding galloping hooves hoisting parade flags, odours of leather and sweat, noise of games and contests.
In his simple contest (standing still, walking, and stopping on my cue), Bobby won ribbons: blue and white. My boy. I was beaming proud of him, and he knew he was special too.
They say a smart dog is a two-year-old child. Bobby was as intelligent as Toby and I was ten, so we three understood each other. How? We communicated through energy: feelings, sounds, smells, body language. I was the elder whom they trusted—unconditionally. Which felt sooo good—like I felt with my younger brothers. Something primordial about being an elder: protective, responsible, selfless.
Then one cloudy day I wandered beyond the milking barn and discovered a large, weather-beaten shed. Peeking through a grimy, broken window to a rack against the wall, I spotted a rifle. I was fascinated by guns, my eyes opened wide, I looked left, looked right, no one around, opened the door, and slipped inside.
The shed was dark and reeked of rot. Knives, saws, hatchets, tangles of ropes, cans of dirty oil, ashtrays full of butts were piled on dirty workbenches against the walls.
The floor was stained with purple splotches. Painted on the cement floor in the center of the open room was a black rectangle about five by ten feet. On a beam above the rectangle hung a heavy steel pulley with rusty iron chains dangling down, like gallows. The place looked, smelled, and felt like an evil dungeon.
Still, I stepped across the rectangle to check out the gun, a small-bore rifle, obviously well used because the butt was worn and shiny, the cobalt-blue barrel freshly oiled. This gun had killed.
I stared at it, hypnotized by its power, tempted to steal it actually…
The door swung open. Light poured into the room. The silhouette of a tall man stood there.
Blood rushed to my head. I jumped two feet, a trapped thief. But it was one of the farmers, so I covered myself by saying, "Oh, hi Mr. Jenklin, what kind of rifle is this?"
"22."
"What's it for?"
"For to kill the beef cattle."
"Kill them?"
"You’re in the slaughterhouse, son."
TO BE CONTINUED…
~ John