These big bulls are maintained and fed solely for their stud services.
They’re supposedly not much good to eat
A dear friend came up in the 1930s on a rural Mississippi farm. Growing up on a farm is a bit of a trope in the modern era. Back in the days before World War II, in the Deep South, however, it was a common way of life.
My wife is smart, assertive and capable. She is also of modest stature. Friends tell me the only substantive thing I contribute to our relationship is the capacity to reach tall things in the kitchen. So it sort of is with guys of other species as well.
In the bovine world, the women really do all the work. At a farm near where we live today, the cows and calves wander about freely in a massive expansive pasture. The cows keep busy gossiping about cow stuff while feeding and grooming the youngsters. There seems to be a social order to it all. Then there is a single massive bull maintained by all by his lonesome in his own separate space down the road.
I’m told those big bulls are too tough to make particularly good steaks. That big guy is kept around for one purpose and one purpose only. He’s there solely to make little cows. Outside of breeding season, the price he pays is a lifetime of solitude. On my buddy’s farm, their big breeder bull was an enormous docile creature named Ephraim.
There is a strange hierarchy among cows. The females of the
species seem to do all the real work.
A fully grown bull can weigh more than 2,000 pounds. Even if they have a sweet disposition, an animal that large can yet still be incredibly dangerous. If they are by their nature grouchy, then things can get dicey quickly. So it was at another farm down the road from my friend’s place.
Their breeder bull made fine baby cows, but he hated everybody. One day a farm hand got sloppy, and the big animal crushed him to death. News travels fast in the rural Deep South, so word of this tragedy made the rounds in a hurry. Condolences were offered, and a plan contrived. The following day the big animal was to pay for his sins. His steaks might be tough, but somebody, somewhere would be willing to eat them. Now hold that thought.
It was getting late, and the light was growing dim. As my friend was cleaning up after supper, he looked out the window and saw Ephraim standing outside the pasture. Ephraim was indeed a docile creature, but he was still a big, dumb animal. Sometimes a good scratching against the fence was adequate to push it over. My buddy sighed and headed outside. He would return the bull to the pasture and then run the fence the following morning to mend the damage. By the time he got outside, the light was failing.
Ephraim was essentially a family pet and responded reliably when spoken to. Our hero patted the big animal on the flank and opened the nearby pasture gate. He directed the bull back into the enclosure and stepped aside to allow the beast to comply. Ephraim simply looked at him dumbly.
By now, it was getting late, and the man was getting tired. He gestured to the gaping gate and slapped the animal vigorously on its flank. The bull just stared at him. This time he let out a little snort. Now things were in danger of escalation.
My buddy retrieved a nearby discarded length of 2×4 lumber and used it to give Ephraim a decent prod. At that, the big animal turned to face his antagonist. He then glowered uncharacteristically and snorted like he meant it.
Such stuff seems cold and cruel to those who have not lived it, but farm animals exist in a harder world than do we modern civilized folk. Right, wrong, or otherwise, these creatures are raised for food. There is certainly no excuse for rank abuse, but there is little time or inclination for undue civility, either.
Ephraim pawed the ground and lowered his head. It was clear that the animal planned to make an issue of this. The beast had tasted the sweet elixir of freedom and apparently had little interest in returning to his place of incarceration. As Ephraim made to lunge at the man, my buddy swung the 2×4 and broke it squarely across the hulking animal’s skull.
The big bull was momentarily stunned. With a look of bewilderment in his eyes, he then turned and obediently marched into the pasture. My pal secured the gate and went to bed, both aggravated and confused by the evening’s atypical proceedings.
The following day broke bright and clear. My pal got up early, as was his custom, took breakfast, and prepared to start a new day. As he looked out the front window across the expansive pasture, he was shocked to see not one but two bulls munching happily. One was the expected Ephraim, while the other was the homicidal neighbor from down the road who had somehow escaped his enclosure on the day before his scheduled execution.
Compared to our rugged forebears who domesticated the continent, invented lots of cool stuff, won scads of wars and quite literally freed an enslaved world, we seem an awfully fragile lot these days.
Americans are not quite so durable as was once the case. As such, I thought it might be a fun exercise to see if I could offend every single person in the country in a single weekly column. All I’m really doing is packaging facts — here goes.
Men are Stupid
Testosterone is the primary sex hormone in males; an anabolic steroid from the androstane class. Testosterone begins life as cholesterol before being synthesized into its active form in the liver. This complex chemical combination of Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen is arguably the most powerful force for chaos the universe has ever seen. Plutonium is mere baby formula compared to a proper surge of testosterone in a 13-year-old male.
As a physician, I have seen guys shot, set on fire, blown up and dismembered as a direct result of the deleterious effect of this mysterious toxin. In concert with alcohol, the synergy can be simply epic. By contrast, I have not once attended a woman professionally after she poured gasoline over a barbecue grill because she was, “Getting really hungry.”
By the numbers, 93.3% of the incarcerated population in America is male. Let the significance of that number sink in for a minute. Guys run the world and look at the shape it is in. Men are clearly idiots.
Women are Crazy
Ask any radical feminist to define a hysterectomy and they will rightly say it is the procedure wherein the female reproductive organs are surgically removed. However, I dare say very few radical feminists have dissected the etymological origins of the term. Hysterectomy is derived from the Latin hystericus meaning, “of the womb.”
Back in the day, hystericus was viewed as a neurotic condition unique to women involving emotional outbursts, unpredictability and outright madness. Medical practitioners in centuries past believed this condition somehow originated in the uterus. As a result, the term hysterectomy literally translates, “the surgical excision of the crazy from the woman.”
“Lunacy” is also an oblique antiquated reference to the woman’s monthly menstrual cycle.
It seems at some point in the distant past, the entire planet was tropical.
(Source: Mandy Choi, Unsplash)
Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg first embarked on a career in climate activism at the age of 15. Hers has since become a household name around the globe, thrice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize — something for which I have yet to be considered a single time. She carries a diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome and refers to it as her “Superpower.” I think that’s legitimately awesome.
Greta inspired “Fridays for Future,” also known as the “School Strike for Climate.” This is an international movement wherein students skip Friday classes to participate in demonstrations demanding action on climate change. On March 15, 2019, one of these events attracted more than a million strikers worldwide.
When I was Greta’s age, I would have marched in support of invading space aliens if it got me out of school and into a crowd with girls. The argument could be made if you can’t be trusted with a handgun, you also shouldn’t be able to vote. Let Greta pay taxes for a few decades and then we’ll talk.
In February 2017, scientists retrieved a core sample drilled from the ocean floor in the Amundsen Sea off the coast of Western Antarctica. This sample, recovered a mere 560 miles from the South Pole, was fraught with fossilized plant spores, pollen and a mass of preserved fossilized plant roots. There have been ample fern and palm fossils discovered on all seven continents, as well as the North Pole. At some point in the past, long before men mucked with anything, the entire planet was actually tropical.
I don’t doubt the climate is changing, I’m just not convinced anything we do at this point is going to substantively change that fact. The upside is global warming should open up vast areas in places like Canada, Alaska and Russia to both habitation and agriculture.
When life gives you lemons, why not just grow some more lemons?
There are literally countless other examples of woke low-hanging fruit ripe for ridicule. For now, just send all your hate mail and parcel bombs to me in care of FMG Publications. We’ll be expecting them.
