The Mighty, Mighty Beeftones...

How often do we actually think about cows anymore? Don't get me wrong I love Gary Larson, and The Far Side, and I once thought the chicken joint commercials with the self preservationist cows were clever, but we really give cows the short shrift, don't we? Those cows are Holsteins, by the way, under no threat from us rather than sore nipples, poor living conditions, antibiotics& hormones.... Ok, we're not going to eat them, anyway I mean, looking back, among the first artifacts from man were the cave paintings of...what? Cattle! Of course, we don't really know what they were thinking about when they did them, but the best guess of art historians, and probably psychologists was that it was a ritualistic thing. Deep in the ground, it was perhaps the shamans who went and created these images; those feared and respected and just frankly damned odd spiritualists of the time. They didn't create them for viewing pleasure of the masses (such as they were). It was literally a deep and hidden magic- an effigy, an attempt at control or prayer, if you will, that ennobled both the powerful and majestic beasts as well as the dauntless primitive hunters who went after the massive beeves with nothing more than wits, desperation, and a sharp stick. Surely nowhere in human history was there an expedition of more heroic mettle or greater consequence. The odds were astronomical, and the consequence of failure may well have meant starvation. The cave paintings recognized and hallowed the quest, and invoked the assistance of whatever god(s) there might have been, for it was sorely needed. Somewhere in all that history things changed, obviously. The herds were tamed, though doubtless not all at once, and the effort in that must have been Herculean as well. But eventually there was the cowboy asserting himself over the herd; and there too, was heroism perhaps, though the odds were not what they had once been. There was dominance, there was husbandry, and there was the corral... The mighty beeves were no longer such a formidable adversary, and the holiness of the hunt was simply no longer. No, it didn't happen overnight, or even quickly enough to be noticed, probably, but on some bone deep level, I suspect we as a species, miss it. Mostly the docile cows of today are listlessly funneled down gated chutes 'til they arrive at a juncture where a bolt is mechanically impaled through their skulls. Their bones are thinned with domestication, and then later we buy pieces of them wrapped in plastic upon little sheets of Styrofoam... Yee-ha. And yet, a lot of us still wear the clothes; not the old traditional clothes of some animal skin and a sharp stick, but the hats, the jeans, the boots. At least some of us do. Sometimes we'll breed up a Bull until it is massively muscular and violent, then we'll place some deranged man on the back of it after the animal is sufficiently antagonized, and see how long this man can hang onto its back with one hand. It’s kind of sick when you think about it. We take a thoroughly domesticated animal and jazz it up with amphetamines or steroids or whatever, and turn it into a maniacal hell-beast to again demonstrate our dominance over a completely broken animal. It might be more impressive if the guy had to actually chase it down and jump on its back rather than be lowered onto the animal while it’s confined in a steel stall, where it can't even turn halfway around. I’m not one to question the mettle of a person who does this; I sure as hell wouldn’t do it even if I wasn’t philosophically opposed to the practice. Maybe this does recall some ancestral urge on our part to conquer these mighty animals, but it sure doesn't ennoble the bull anymore. The Spaniards are so much more democratic about it. At least when they let the bulls out the animals have the opportunity to trample as many people as they can. Then I think about the poor damned bull in the stall. Here it is, a completely drug crazed, outrageously bulked up slobbering minion of hell, but somewhere in there, he's gotta know that he is his species one best hope. "But, Christ!" he thinks "I'm all pinned up, and this guys strapped to my back, and who the hell are these guys poking at me and carrying these orange tires around? What's a bull to do?" I do hate anthropomorphizing, but you get the point. Maybe all those drugs gave the bull ADHD and it couldn't focus long enough on one guy to kill him. God knows they affected me that way...