Moon Bull

The thing you have to understand about the Lunar colony is that living on the moon itself isn’t the issue. They’d accounted for almost everything before they’d put the first human in the colony long term. The issue is keeping things alive. The domed city could almost pass for a city on Earth. It certainly tried with its roads and parks and open-air vistas. The bubble is and remains the epitome of sustainable engineering. On paper, the colony could survive indefinitely. Yet in reality, in practice, things died. The moment they planted anything other than trees and grass in the carefully prepared soil the timer started. The moment anyone and anything set foot on the surface the hourglass started dribbling sand. Which makes the bull so odd?

It started as a joke really. A nursery rhyme made real. You put people on the moon you got to have a cow. The cow jumps over the moon you know. All you needed then is a hyena and a bit of imagination. It made for great publicity for the colony too. Scientists trying to figure out how to enable large mammals to live in the lunar colony. They’d already made adaptions to several other animal’s DNA to send those up. Long extinct arctic birds, fish, etc. Trying to recreate home on our tiny rocky satellite. Folks voted on the names – Dick and Jane, Belle and Beau, Skeeter and Dolly. A long list of horrid and hilarious entries with the worst of them winning. Blue the Bull and Cheese the cow. They fiddled and fussed and broadcasted the entire saga from in-vitro implantation of the genetically altered bovine embryos to their birth on the moon. Their Earth-born mother died right after they were weaned.

Cheese lived for two years. She’d grown and thrived for the first fifteen months like a normal cow. Seeming to easily adapt to her lunar home. Then she’d stopped eating. Stopped doing anything and poor Blue spent every day bringing her hay and nudging her to get up. When she died folks mentioned how the moon seemed to kill things, but they didn’t dwell on it. After all, they’d done everything right in creating it hadn’t they? Blue survived. He mourned Cheese for months, walking every morning to her enclosure and letting out a long low moo before trudging onto the field of genetically modified grasses where he spent his days grazing. After some time, his caretakers noticed he’d stopped going to her pen, but if he chanced to pass it, he’d stare mournfully at the empty stall before moving on.

Went on like that for years. Until someone finally realized that Blue never seemed to get any older. Had to have been his fourth or fifth set of caretakers who’d pointed it out. Every five years someone would say, well why don’t we see about getting him some company? Then the debate would start raging about the costs and feasibility and the way things didn’t last on the moon.

That’s how they talk about it. They say things don’t last. Never found any successful pregnancies that started on the lunar surface. Never had any old people that weren’t already old before they got there. The moon is for visits. Everyone knew you didn’t stay. If you stayed you didn’t last. Except for Blue. So, they took to rotating out his caretakers after ten years. Except no one seemed to realize bulls don’t live more than 20 years on Earth. Then someone pointed out the fact that they’d been rotating his caretakers for going on 30 years. So, they started to study him. Took his blood once a week and monitored how much he ate, the size and shape of his poop – you know, normal science things. They couldn’t explain it. And after a while, they left it alone. He seemed to dislike it when they bothered him too much. He just liked to watch the way the humans and the few other species of animals living in the colony lived their lives.

I started visiting him when he was around fifty in Earth years. I’d been working for the International Space Association for ten years before even setting foot on the moon. I remember it like was yesterday. The seemingly endless rounds of shots and tests before the quick flight up from the Low Earth Orbit Station. My woefully brief tour of the colony. Every day I was there I’d go visit his enclosure, Blue would tilt his head and look at me when I greeted him, so I took to talking to him like I’d talk to anyone. Telling him about the changes in the colony, the way things stood back on Earth. Just small talk really. He didn’t seem to mind. He stayed close enough to listen and chewed on some bit of something, occasionally shaking his head as if something I’d said amused or surprised him. I enjoyed the peacefulness of our one-sided conversation. The simple understanding I saw in his big bovine eyes so the next time I came up I went back.

I kept it up for a good thirty years until they told me I wouldn’t be able to make the trip anymore and wanted me to retire. I still felt young, despite not looking it but times had changed. They’d become more cautious about who they allowed into the colony, about how long you could stay, and what you could do when you got back. The last time I saw him I told him about it. Told him how something had spooked them, made them want to abandon the colony for good. Of course, they couldn’t. Didn’t they need humans up here with the plants and animals they’d adapted to live with them there? But that was an argument for younger people. I said my goodbyes to Blue and he did something surprising, he came over and pressed his big nose into my hand. Somehow, he’d understood he wouldn’t be seeing me anymore.

I heard last year that they were rotating his caretakers every five years now. Not that it mattered. I was content to know he was being cared for by someone, even if they didn’t last. He seemed happy every time I saw him. Carefree even, despite being so alone. I told my grandson he was close to 80 now and had already outlived everyone who’d been there when he was born. Of course, he didn’t believe me. Everyone thought they just named every bull on the moon Blue. Everyone knew the moon sucked the life out of things. Except for that bull. Yup. He’s an odd one.