Ferdinand

My grandfather was always a strange man. He was sentimental and practical; traits that usually conflict, but he used it to tinker and brought new purpose to things that he cared about. The old barn was one of those things. By the time I was alive, it could barely be called a barn anymore. The old wood roof had been replaced with one of tin. It only had its west-facing wall, but that too had been replaced with particleboard. Even the animals once kept inside were long gone, replaced by broken lawnmowers and boats made out of hope and duct tape. Only the sturdy pine pillars survived from its original construction. We called that old shack 'the boat barn' when I was growing up; but when my father was young, it served a different purpose; it was home to Ferdinand.

Grandpa loved broken things, so when he heard that the local 4H chapter had a calf that had been rejected by its mother, he knew he had to save it. I don’t know much about cows or why the calf wasn’t wanted, but I do know that this calf was small and had been born without balls, so the farmers didn’t want to waste resources on him.

I was told my grandpa and uncles worked all weekend to build him a suitable shelter and paddock, and my grandfather was pleased as a punch to bring him home a few days later. The calf was only a few weeks old and just over 80 pounds when Grandpa brought him home. He was a scraggly little runt made of bones covered in soft white fur with a big brown spot on his back and a black nose. Even though grandpa knew he might not make it, he made sure to bring out bottles of milk to him every few hours so the calf could have a chance to grow strong.

At first, the calf just seemed to lay around, seemingly depressed to be away from the herd and his family, but after a few days of attention and food, his personality started to shine through. He was a fiery little guy with a playful disposition and a lot of energy. After about a week, he started to get so excited when he would see my grandpa coming with the bottle that he would run full speed all the way around the paddock and headbutt my grandpa as he dropped down into the pen, nuzzling him to the ground, where my grandpa would laugh and hug his furry friend. His friendliness might have been why Grandpa named him after the legend of the gentle giant Ferdinand the bull, or it might have been because his bull was ballless and the Ferdinand of story was a bit of a coward.

Either way, for several months that was their pattern, grandpa would walk out of the house, and Ferdinand would run around his pen and knock my grandpa to the ground. When Ferdinand was a runt, it was cute, but as time passed Ferdinand grew, and eventually, his horns started to show. Eventually, this endearing morning ritual slowly transformed into a daily dance with death. By the time Ferdinand was about a year old, he weighed more than 1000 pounds and Grandpa had gotten a few non-severe injuries while feeding him, but Grandpa didn’t want to give up on him, so he tried to get clever instead. He took a few slats out of the paddock side of the barn and closed the doors, leaving Ferdinand in the field and keeping himself out of the way while he dropped food into the bull’s trough.

Ferdinand ran halfway around the paddock and waited for Grandpa to drop down into his pen, but it never happened, and after a few minutes of waiting Ferdinand threw a little temper tantrum and bucked and kicked at the far side of the field. His eye caught the hay dropping down into his food trough and spotted my grandpa sticking out of the removed slats. He let out a bellow of confused anger and joy and ran full speed at the barn, shattering the door and knocking my grandpa off his ladder as he ran all around the yard in victory.

I am told it took a lot of time to catch Ferdinand that day, and that night some men loaded him into a truck as my grandfather stared silently into the empty field and the broken barn door where he stayed late into the night.

My father was still a boy back then, but the story of Ferdinand and my grandpa lives on in our family, and most people seem to tell it to taunt my grandpa for making bad choices, but to me, it speaks to the character he had. He is kind to broken things and wants to make them useful again even if he doesn’t know how when he starts. But there is also a lesson to learn from his one mistake; when raising a living creature, make sure that its behaviors that you encourage when it is young will be appropriate when it is grown too. Otherwise, the habit you encouraged might knock you down a few pegs.