Bull!

There’s nothing like learning your first bad word. Before you even know it’s a bad word, you feel it’s intense expression. Then amazingly you also find that your new word disturbs the grownups.

Excuse me, my name is Bethany Smercle, I’m processing my inner beast as part of my zookeeper training. You never know what’s going to be involved in an occupation until you go down that road. And I am going down that fauna filled road to find what I love. I hope you don’t mind that I share these things with you. My zoology professor says it helps to share our formative species specific experiences with others.

I’ve chosen Bull as my inner beast exploration topic. If that doesn’t sound very scientific that’s because I’m getting a true liberal arts education- and no stinting on the arts.

There was a brief and beautiful time in my life when my response to any question was simply: “Bull!” I’d heard an older girl say it and I loved the way it burst from her lips sounding like a complete accomplishment.

“Did you wash your hair?” Grandma might say or any other question. And my response would be, “Bull!” I’d quietly wait for my opportunity to respond to something then gleefully pounce with, “Bull! Bull! Bull!” It didn’t take long for grandma to understand she needed to tell me that this was a bad word, and I’ll tell you it wasn’t easy for me to understand. I was only five years old. It didn’t make sense. What a loss that word was to me when I was no longer allowed to say it.

As a girl I remember playing “bucking bronco” with one of my friends. We’d take turns pretending to be the bucking bronco that the other girl would ride trying not to fall off. How strangely good it felt to be jostled around like that, on top of a falling off world.

In the land this wild cattle roamed. Through the grasses it continued. It was kept, in the pasture with its cows, hunted in the wild, and ridden for sport in the rodeo. It became an emblem for our home on the prairie.

Once hanging out with my farm-girl friend, we were walking down a country road and I asked, “why we don’t we just cut through this field to get to the cherry tree?”

“We could,” she said “but there’s a bull in that field and if he sees us he’ll be mad, and he could kill us with his horns.”

Then she added, “but I don’t see him right now. Maybe he’s not in this field today. Should we try it?” We discussed this, the risks and likeliness of getting gored. We finally decided to cut through the field. She said it wasn’t a good idea to run, as this would annoy the bull if he saw us. I was terrified and regretted every step I trespassed against the bull. But we got across without incident. Cows in the distance stayed in the Kansas distance of scrub and dry grasses.

Bulls can be peaceful too I remembered from Ferdinand, the children’s book. Maybe there is more to a bull than the head down foot stamping stereotype. A bull, a buffalo, a herd of cattle sing the heart of everything a midwestern girl can hide under her vest. Like a rhinestone cowboy...getting cards and letters from people I don’t even know... under the star spangled lights.

The point of this exercise is not to analyze it. The point is simply to draw out more love and understanding.