I'm in charge of the farm while my parents are gone (ah, the freedom! Unsupervised with a whole farm to play on! Unfettered by -- waitaminute, there's a fuckload of work here) including all the beasties. This includes the cows, who are all heavily pregnant but appear to be unaware of this; yesterday they were out in the hayground and running around bucking like a bunch of calves. Matronly, my ass. And it includes the two bulls -- soon to be hamburger -- who I have to feed from the bunk.
"Because they'll try to hump you?" I said when my father cautioned me not to go in the pen. It's a problem we've had before. The cows try and hump the humans, the cows hump each other, the bulls hump each other, the female dog humps the baby calves, the dogs occasionally hold a threesome which is a bit odd considering that one of the participants is castrated. It's your basic run-or-get-humped world. Occasionally people tell me how homosexuality is unnatural. They always seem unnerved when I start laughing hysterically.
"No," he said. "Well, yes, but only if you turn your back on them. The real problem is that they want their heads scratched and they'll knock you over if you're not careful."
This is another problem. Most humans have, I've noticed, two possible attitudes towards animals: either they see them as your basic Skinner machines, all instinct and reflex, or they think of them as furry humans. Neither is true. Animals aren't dumb, nor are they machines. They have brains. But they are also not human and may be missing some of the cognitive leaps, one of which is that "I got bigger" concept.
I am not joking. It's a well-known trick -- the Amish still use it -- to go in once a day for the first few months of a horse's life and pick it up. That way, when the horse gets to be a ton or so and capable of stomping you to a pulp, he never does, because as far as he's concerned you're still that kickass mofo who can pick him up and carry him around. You just haven't, y'know, done so recently.
Animals are not so good on the cognitive leaps, but they're buggers for remembering.
And this is where people get in trouble when raising calves. When a 50-pound calf butts you in the back of the knees for headscratchies, it's cute; when the same animal weighs 500 pounds, it's bloody dangerous. We know this; the animal doesn't. He doesn't know anything's changed, and he does not understand that he can hurt you now.
(This also gets people in trouble with the sexual thing. We don't see bulls as a sex objects no matter how much like humans we treat them, so we assume they'll understand that too. Guess again. Treat a bull like a pet, and when the hormones start a-goin' as far as he's concerned you're either his rival or his bitch, and either way you're likely to end up as a pretty red smear on the wall.)
We know all this and we're careful, but some animals are naturally friendly and one of the bulls falls into that category. He thinks he's a big fuzzy teddybear. Rule #210 of surviving farming: do not go into the bullpen with the 500 pound delusional teddybear.
It's things like these that make my career so much more interesting than most. I mean, in most places "watch your ass" is a euphemism....
"Because they'll try to hump you?" I said when my father cautioned me not to go in the pen. It's a problem we've had before. The cows try and hump the humans, the cows hump each other, the bulls hump each other, the female dog humps the baby calves, the dogs occasionally hold a threesome which is a bit odd considering that one of the participants is castrated. It's your basic run-or-get-humped world. Occasionally people tell me how homosexuality is unnatural. They always seem unnerved when I start laughing hysterically.
"No," he said. "Well, yes, but only if you turn your back on them. The real problem is that they want their heads scratched and they'll knock you over if you're not careful."
This is another problem. Most humans have, I've noticed, two possible attitudes towards animals: either they see them as your basic Skinner machines, all instinct and reflex, or they think of them as furry humans. Neither is true. Animals aren't dumb, nor are they machines. They have brains. But they are also not human and may be missing some of the cognitive leaps, one of which is that "I got bigger" concept.
I am not joking. It's a well-known trick -- the Amish still use it -- to go in once a day for the first few months of a horse's life and pick it up. That way, when the horse gets to be a ton or so and capable of stomping you to a pulp, he never does, because as far as he's concerned you're still that kickass mofo who can pick him up and carry him around. You just haven't, y'know, done so recently.
Animals are not so good on the cognitive leaps, but they're buggers for remembering.
And this is where people get in trouble when raising calves. When a 50-pound calf butts you in the back of the knees for headscratchies, it's cute; when the same animal weighs 500 pounds, it's bloody dangerous. We know this; the animal doesn't. He doesn't know anything's changed, and he does not understand that he can hurt you now.
(This also gets people in trouble with the sexual thing. We don't see bulls as a sex objects no matter how much like humans we treat them, so we assume they'll understand that too. Guess again. Treat a bull like a pet, and when the hormones start a-goin' as far as he's concerned you're either his rival or his bitch, and either way you're likely to end up as a pretty red smear on the wall.)
We know all this and we're careful, but some animals are naturally friendly and one of the bulls falls into that category. He thinks he's a big fuzzy teddybear. Rule #210 of surviving farming: do not go into the bullpen with the 500 pound delusional teddybear.
It's things like these that make my career so much more interesting than most. I mean, in most places "watch your ass" is a euphemism....
posted at 02:13 PM on 02/06/06
by kat -
Category: Animals
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