A prize exhibit in the local museum where I volunteer is the massive horned skull of an aurochs, a prehistoric ancestor of the domesticated cow. This bovine Goliath bears the mark of David on its forehead – a fist-sized hole where it had been poleaxed by a metal spike.
Five miles from where the slaughtered aurochs was unearthed, its skull was made flesh for me in the great head of a bull, three metres away and closing. The beast meant business, flashing the whites of its eyes, black pupils rolling back menacingly, but there was no immediate danger.
He was lawnmowering up a rough corner of the field, lashing out his tongue to encircle clumps of greenery and tugging them back into his mouth. I had slipped into a metal kissing gate, a shark cage of security where I could watch him at very close quarters, see raindrops shower off his felt-like hide, and breathe in his sweet scent of fermenting grass.
One of his cows stood beside him, inviting awestruck comparisons. His head and steepling shoulders were half as broad again. As for his neck – he had no neck. She showed her backbone and a hint of radiating ribs; his taut back was encased in muscle, his chest flashing a twelve-pack.
His undercarriage was grossly impressive, his hairy goolies a pair of handbags, a dewlap hanging from his throat like a loose sack. He was a grande dame in heels, his bulk borne on slender forelegs.
He took one more step forward, now almost within touching distance. He kept his head down and I sniggered silently at the Ziggy Stardust tuft of mad hair on his crown.
The facile words “deadly but docile” struck me at the time, but on the following night I was walking in near darkness along the fence beside another field where a similar herd of reddish-brown cows were grazing peacefully – or so I thought. As I passed the bull, he snorted at one of his females and butted her, sending half a ton of poor cow smashing into the steel barrier. The fence bulged, the cables thrummed, but held. Beware of the bull.
