bovine dreams.

For the unenlightened, a cow is a female bovine that has been bred. A heifer would be a female bovine which is unbred and under two years of age. A bull is a sexually mature male bovine. A steer is a sexually mature male bovine that has a serious case of depression and sits around eating all day whilst staring wistfully at all the cows in the pasture.

The procedures for turning a bull into a steer are varied but they all have the same result. One way, and the simplest I think, is to place these little rubber bands around the appendage to be removed after the calf's li'l fellers have begun to dangle. After a few weeks, the whole thing just kinda falls off, no muss, no fuss. Another way is a tool called a "Burdizzo Bloodless Castrator". This is not quite so nice.

I think that it might be worse for the person operating this piece of equipment. The calf is lucky, he gets anasthetic.

What you do is chase down a bull calf, tackle him and a couple of you hold him down. The guy who lost the draw rubs this ice-thing on the area involved, takes this tool that looks like a dull hoof trimmer, kinda like a pair of pincers if that helps, and then crushes the spermatic cord in four places by squeezing the handle real hard and listening for the "crunch" of a successful application.

Of course now the rest of the bull calves have seen what you're up to and have decided that it's really not for them. So the chase begins.

It's very important to know the difference between bulls and steers and cows. You don't want to ski behind cows, because they're usually kept pregnant and it's not a real good idea to run them too much. Steers are a different story though.

They really don't have much of a life anyway, first they have the indignity of being jumped on by a bunch of farmboys and then having things that they might rather leave hanging where they were found, removed rather violently. Then they're put out to a pasture to get fat and stare at pretty young cows who have no interest in them. So you got to figure that a little skiing might do them good.

What you do is find you a good steer, one who looks good and strong and the longer the tail the better. A long tail is very desirable. The longer the better.

Steers spend a lot of time eating roughage and even though you're gonna give him a run before you ski, the further away you are from the business end of a steer, the better.

So what you do is chase him around a bit, hopefully exhausting any unpleasant surprises, then grab his tail and hang on. He'll drag you all over the place, although he'll probably head for a low hanging branch or a stump pretty quickly, you're in for a pretty good ride as long as you can stay upright.

Footwear is pretty important. I like either cheap tennis shoes or cowboy boots. Heavy lug sole work boots are a bad idea, they tend to give too much traction and will send you steer body-surfing which is nowhere near as much fun, you're in a cattle pasture after all. You may have seen people on tv or in competition using harnesses of rope or leather, these people are very experienced professionals and you should not try and copy their feats. A good long tail is fine for the novice.

My friend Robert is a champion skier.

Another friend, Jennifer was asked to name five types of cattle by our high school agriculture teacher one day, She said, "There's red and white ones, black and white ones, black ones, and I can't remember the names of the other ones." Jennifer is from the city.

We raised red and white ones, (Herefords), black ones, (Angus) and one of the ones she couldn't remember, Brangus. Brangus are a mix between an Angus cow and a huge beast of a male bovine with a really bad temper known as a Brahma-Zebu. These are the ones that you see people who are suicidal and just plain stupid riding in rodeos. They are characterized by a large hump on their back, this is where they keep their bad attitude, and an incredible desire to turn anything that invades their territory into paste.

Robert was the king of steer skiing. He also was easily influenced into doing things that the rest of us might get a good laugh from.

You might think that a big, 2000 pound Brahma bull that really does nothing more than strut around and have his way with cows all day, could be up for a little fun. He's not. Robert did have a pretty good ride for a few seconds. That big ole bull could really run. Too bad he figured out that running away from the idiot hanging onto his tail was not the way to get rid of the annoyance. Robert did make an impressive landing though, even after clearing a five rail fence.

I suppose that one could ski behind elephants as well, I believe I'd want one with a really long tail though.