From Harper’s August ’24 Findings:
Women bond more closely with therapy bulls than men do.
That’s the entire finding. No explication. So I have a bunch of questions — as well as one of my life recollections.
For one thing, how can bulls be therapy animals? Although I’ve had plenty of therapy, an animal was not a part of it. So forgive me if my idea of Therapy Animal is a dog. Maybe a cat, but I’m allergic, so even typing the word “cat” gives me symptoms.
(Shouldn’t you be able to hug a therapy animal?)
Lately, of course, we hear of other types of therapy, or service, animals. Recently, a story in the Times cited a clutch of parrots claimed by a building resident as her service animals. The parrots squawked as parrots will do, very loudly. This was not of service to other residents. To the disgruntlement of all of us who manage to live in co-op apartments sans parrots, the whole business led to a lawsuit which the woman won. Quite a lot of money.
As a side note, I knew someone who had parrots as pets. I had several close encounters with them and can report they are horrible animals.
But I’ve flown off my true story line. Which concerns bulls and my moderately close encounter with a bull righteously name Big Foot. His life’s work was not therapy. Not exactly.
The scene: along with a close friend, I once visited a cattle farm in New Jersey. The guy who owned it, an ex-military man, was a friend of my friend’s husband. His cattle — and Big Foot — were Emmentalers, out of whose milk came the cheese of the same name. (It’s magic.)
The farm, though, was not primarily a cattle ranch. Although New Jersey does have plenty of farmland (whence my corn and peaches and blueberries and other yummies), Jersey farms aren’t capacious enough to accommodate herds of cows. What this farm did was produce…
Big Foot semen! That is, Big Foot himself produced the semen and the farm did what you do with bull semen, which is get it into canisters in some frozen form and sell it to farms with big herds of lady cows, for the purposes of artificial insemination.
Yes, Big Foot was that kind of bull, a fine, prize-winning kind of bull, one whose semen was valuable in the cattle market.
As the ex-military guy escorted us to Big Foot’s pen, he amused himself by relating the business of semen-farming. I think he thought he’d shock my tender sensibilities. Back in those days, people like this guy assumed from my appearance (long hair) and homeland (New York City) I was a commie, i.e., the enemy.
I wasn’t and he didn’t shock my tender sensibilities. Big Foot, though…
Standing in his special pen was not so much a bull as an exaggeration, elephantine, but bovine. I eased my way close to the pen. I was five foot seven inches tall. Big Foot’s back loomed over me, cutting off the sun. He was impossibly long; each foot measured maybe a foot and a half. Or more.
Now, this was long before I became a devotée of the Scottish documentary series, This Farming Life, which over its five-season course introduced me to plenty of prize bulls. So I now know one-ton bulls can be, well, maybe not cuddly creatures but not without genial, even mischievous, personalities. If you raise a bull from babyhood, a relationship develops that is not without mutual affection.
But gigantic Big Foot was not a Scottish bull let out into the fields to have fun with the ladies. So the question was, how do you harvest sperm from a bull that size?
The ex-military guy said, “How do you think?” Heh heh heh.
“Wait,” I said, “you mean someone gets up close with Big Foot and masturbates him?”
Guy nodded and everyone laughed. (And I think I was shown the large plastic gadget which would encompass Big Foot’s erect penis and collect the invaluable semen when he did his job.
That was interesting. Since then, though — and again thanks to This Farming Life — I’ve learned that male animals are not given hand jobs; there are other tools and methods of stimulating them. Although the collection process does require a plastic bag and a necessary degree of human intimacy with the male animal and his member.
That’s it. That’s my whole bull story. It’s true. But it doesn’t answer the top question, which is how can a bull be a therapy animal?
Any ideas?