The Lonely Bull

We've had many interesting pets on our farm. It's always a challenge to come up with an original name for a cat. Some of ours have been: Dark Clark, Lovely Lois, Spitzbergen, Frog Hair, Little Bear, Cruiser, Yellow Cat, Toulouse (my favorite), and many more. Our dogs have been less original but I like the puppies we named Mac n' Tosh. My son had a frog (I forget his name) that came to a tragic end at the hands of his sister who accidently gave him a bath in a bucket of fertilizer. My poor little boy brought that pet to me in tears, with horror written all over his face. With a broken heart, he said, "But he was such an interesting pet."

Our lonely bull was unique. He was a small bucket calf. My son wanted to raise him by bottle-feeding him. The color of his coat named him Rusty. He was adorable and lovable and strong. From the beginning it was a challenge for a small boy to feed this calf. I didn't realize that calves actually butt their mothers in the belly while they are nursing. Rusty grew bigger and stronger quickly. One day my son came in from the feeding, gasping for breath, with tears in his eyes. He fell on the floor, writhing from lack of air and pain. I watched him anxiously. Finally, after several minutes of this, he looked up at me and stated, "Being a mother is a pain." I burst out laughing. Leave it to this boy to say the unpredictable!

Anyway, Rusty grew and grew,... and grew lonely. He was a lonely bull, looking for female companionship. He constantly got out of his pen and wandered around looking for... he didn't really know what! He would come up to the house and lick the windows. He ravaged our picnic table in the middle of the night, thinking it was a cow ( hey, it was almost the same color as he! ) . This resulted in my husband chasing Rusty with first a mop handle, then a pipe, and finally a pitchfork, all three of which broke during the heated battle. My husband was hampered by the fact that it was the middle of the night and he was dressed in only a robe and cowboy boots. In one hand was a flashlight and in the other his weapon of choice. Victory came in the wee hours of the morning and Rusty was returned to his pen.

A decision had to be made concerning this pet. Unfortunately, he was too small to be used as a bull. The only other choice was to take him to the sale barn. My husband and son loaded Rusty in the trailer and took him to the nearest town to sell. They tried not to think about what would happen to Rusty after that. Rusty made the trip even more painful by bawling all the way to town. When they finally arrived, he loudly made his presence known to all the cowboys, farmers, and other animals. One amused fellow said to my son, " He hasn't been to town much, has he." Rusty hadn't been to town at all or seen any other creatures like himself. We jokingly called him The Lonely Bull, but we loved him like all our other pets and it was hard to see him go.