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| He looked like both of these guys made into one person shirtless and giving CPR to a bovine. |
The title really says it all. . .the end. Okay, fine, if you are
going to cry about it here are all the details. It was the “Hamburger
3” steer that would never accept the futility of resistance and
embrace himself as weed eating walking meat grower. My dad had
mentioned many times that if,”that damn fool cow doesn't stop
running off with that rope around his neck he is going to kill
himself.” He was right. One day we were sitting inside in the late
afternoon slash early evening and we heard a terrible bellow coming
from the back yard. You may have heard of the frightening 'death
rattle' that animals are said to exhale with their dieing breaths,
this was a death moo. A long and loud one that drew us out of our
house and a neighbor from back and to the South of our
center-of-the-block lot that I had never seen before. He was tall and
slim and wasn't wearing a shirt. His hair was trimmed into a
confederate soldier style mullet with the beard and mustache of the
Virginia fighting men of the 1860's. He some sort of chest deformity
that looked like he may have been crushed quite badly at some point
in his life and was saved by the marvels of modern medicine mixed
with the pure white hot will to live – and hate, mostly hate. He
ran over and cut the unfortunate bovine down from the tree limb that
he had entangled and hung himself in with a few deft swipes of a
knife that he had. I mean of course he had a knife have you not heard
who I am describing here? The steer fell limp and heavy to the
ground with a thump, and this next part is going to sound absurd, but it is
absolutely true. The shirtless hardcore dude I had never seen before
starts to try to give our downed chattel the kiss of life while we
watched stunned. He tried to find a way to put his living breath into
the young animals lungs but the human mouth is poorly adapted to
forming a seal around the lips of an animal so large. I guess it
should have been touching that he was so dedicated to saving a life
but it was just bizarre. At least he didn’t' climb on top and start
slapping the cow and telling it to fight, fight, fight! We called my
dad and told him what had happened and he dropped what he was doing
and came home. We loaded the self-slaughtered beast into the back of
the truck and hauled his rigor mortised frame to the processor so the
meat wouldn't be wasted. Seeing a character of a man you had never
met or seen giving livestock emergency medical attention is never how
you think a day will end but it is worth doing at least one, at least
for the story.
