It’s fair to say I have more than a passing acquaintance with bulls.
When I was a young fellow, bulls were frequently an obstacle to be overcome, as they frequently interposed themselves between me, my buddies, and favored stretches of northeast Iowa trout streams. One of the worst examples was a Holstein bull owned by one of our neighbors; this belligerent bovine was much in demand for servicing cows and was the recipient of many a blue ribbon from county and state fairs across the upper Midwest, but the animal weighed close to a ton and was mean to the core; even his owner didn’t trust him any farther than he could throw him. “He’s a killer,” the old man would warn us. “Don’t ever give him a chance.”
That bull was so mean, in fact, that he gained a local nickname to go along with his lengthy pedigree name; those of us local kids who made a habit of trying to circumnavigate the…
