As a former farm boy, I have had my share of nerve-wracking encounters with animals in my day, and yet, though courageous he-man I would never claim to be, I don’t remember being particularly afraid of the various species of non-human critters I met along the way. Now that I think of it, walking through a field where a hundred big cattle beasts were mingling (always on the lookout for a little excitement), should have scared the rubber boots right off me. But I often did it without much thought. I might carry a stick, as if that would have done me much good with 400 hooves trampling me into the dirt. And it was never that hard, it seemed, to stampede them.
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In fact, it almost scares me now to look back on it all. Spreading straw in the winter in the stables downstairs drove the cattle crazy and they’d run through the barn at breakneck speed, frolicking with joy at the prospect of fresh, dry “bedding”. Standing around in the midst of this dance was a sure way of getting yourself in the next day’s newspaper but I don’t remember cringing too much.
One scary day I hopped a fence into a field with an obviously deranged young steer which had suffered the bovine equivalent of a nervous breakdown, poor creature, because other cattle had spent the day cutting it out of the herd. When he saw me coming after him to try to drive him up to the barn, he finally decided he’d had enough.
He pawed the ground just like in the bullfight rings in Spain, and came at me with murder in his eyes. This was perhaps one of the most unpleasant moments I’ve ever experienced. I am only here today writing this because I was able to remember what my dad had taught me, not to turn and run, as that would ensure my trampling. I stood there and faced him and when he got a few feet away, I stepped aside. He blew right by me and in the time it took him to turn around, I ran like mad for the fence. But he got to me before I could leap over, so I had to face him again. Again he slid by me and this time I scaled the fence just as he hit it with all his might.
I remember facing sows the size of Volkswagen Beetles that had woke up on the wrong side of the pen. Now and then, there was a dog with a mean disposition. An angry raccoon. Even barn swallows that would dive bomb an innocent farm boy who wandered too close to their young.
I tell you these tales to contrast my shortage of fear of large animals back then with my overabundance of apprehension for one tiny one now. That animal weighs all of one pound. Her name is Pam and she lives in a hamster cage on top of our piano. She has a very bad attitude, l don’t mind saying, and she’s taken a particular dislike to me, not the first female to ever do that, but the first one with whiskers longer than mine. Her male counterpart in a tank on the other side of the piano, Hammy, loves me like a brother, but Pam would rather bite me than look at me. The other night, for example, as I stuck my finger in her “nest” to try to open the plastic top, she chomped down with surprising force on my forefinger. And when I try to pick her up, she goes so ballistic I end up tossing her or dropping her, once right in front of our murderous cats. I think I did that by accident, but …
Everyone else in the house has no problem with this tiny deviant but there’s just something about me that ticks the girl off.
Even now, I’d spread straw in a barn full of frisky cattle any day, rather than thrust my hand anywhere near that hand-chewing demon in brown fur who has it out for me.
©2008 Jim Hagarty
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