I just have to share.
This guy had me laughing so hard I had tears rolling down my face.
Dave, an old friend of mine, told me he once bought a longhorn calf to keep the pasture grass "mowed", &, when the calf got big enough, he would be meat for the table.
Well, the calf followed Dave around like a dog.
They went to the pond together, where Dave fished & Brutus (once you name a calf, it cannot become barbeque) grazed.
When his horns began to emerge, Dave got in the habit of rubbing Brutus's forehead, which the calf really enjoyed.
(Are emerging horns something like emerging teeth? I'll have to ask.)
When he was a huge yearling, Brutus he still liked having his head rubbed.
He would sometimes walk up behind Dave & rub his head on Dave's back.
Dave said the first time he felt something against his back & saw a horn on either side of his body, he nearly had a heart attack.
When Brutus heard Dave's truck, he would go stand at the gate, waiting.
Dave said his now-ex-wife never did that...
By now Brutus is a grown bull with yearnings toward the neighbor's cows, registered Holsteins.
Registered dairy cows are bred to registered bulls to produce more valuable offspring, so, to be a good neighbor, Dave reinforced the fence.
Brutus walked over it.
Dave added 2 strands of barbed wire.
Brutus learned to hook his horns under the wire, lift it, & walk *under* the fence.
Dave had a footing poured, imbedding the wire fence in concrete, & the Holstein herd was safe.
However, Brutus had had an accident:
he had a really bad scratch from the barbed wire.
On one of his most personal areas.
Dave's vet gave the bull an anti-biotic injection & handed Dave a jar of cream with instructions to "rub it on the affected area twice a day."
Dave is the most macho man in the universe.
He said he didn't want to rub salve on a bull's b@lls twice a day, but he couldn't get his wife to do it, & he was afraid the kids would get hurt.
The first time, he said Brutus looked at him like he was crazy.
Then, in Dave's words, "he got to where he liked it. He'd see me coming to the pasture with that jar of cream, & he'd run up to the gate.
Then the scratch got better, & the cream was all gone, but Brutus still wanted me to rub something on him anyway."
Brutus, needless to say, lived to a ripe old age.
He finally developed crippling arthritis & the vet came out & gave him an easy exit with an injection.
Dave buried Brutus in his pasture, in a spot overlooking the pond.
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