It was summertime when the Brahma bull came to terrorize us.
My dad was an old time cowboy, calf roped in a few rodeos during his younger days, and was never without his cowboy hat or boots, unless he was out working the field. So when an acquaintance from his rodeo days came and asked if he could graze his Brahma bull in a fenced off section of Dad’s alfalfa field, my dad agreed. Mama wasn’t asked and when she found out, she was horrified and upset.
The bull was mammoth, full of angry fire, and chased anything that dared to move. With its large upturned horns, huge hump on its back, its body nothing but quivering muscle, we feared it at first glance. It was death on four stout legs. We could hear its angry snorts from far off, warning us to stay clear. So we did.
Dad’s fences weren’t always the best so this allowed that ill-tempered beast to escape too many times. Sometimes we were warned that the bull was out so we stayed in the house or kept close by, always wary and keeping a lookout for it. Most times we weren’t warned and off we go exploring or we’d head up to the Main Canal to swim. Swimming was a daily summer occurrence for us.
On particular day, after we — my brother, sister, cousin, and me — had finished swimming, we began the trek home. We were on the dirt road that ran from our homes to the canal, just walking and goofing around. No worries in our young, carefree minds. A jungle of arrow weeds jutted into the road, blocking our view of the last stretch of road. We came around the jungle not even thinking about that darn Brahma bull and that it might be loose. But that day, it was. When we saw it, we all came to a dead stop. It was waiting for us, I’m pretty sure of that. It stared balefully at us for several long moments, like it was daring us to make the tiniest move. We didn’t. We stood stock still, not speaking, barely breathing, actually. When it started snorting and bouncing its horned head up and down and furiously pawing the ground, either my brother or cousin yelled “RUN!”And we did. Like crazy! Hollering out in terror as we ran for our lives because we could hear that monster thrashing through the arrow weeds like they were nothing but an inconvenience. That bull was on a mission to annihilate at least one of us that day.
We jumped back into the canal just as the bull came over the bank. It held us prisoners in the water for quite a while, all the while shaking its horns and kicking up dirt with its hooves. My dad and uncle finally came to the rescue. They came in a pickup truck looking for the beast. Dad lassoed the bull and towed it back to its enclosure. But that wasn’t the end of our ordeal. Oh no. The monster continued to escape and terrorize us many more times. Once it even rammed into a car and scared the hell out of some relatives who then refused to come over to the house until that Brahma bull was gone.
It was a happy day when the bull’s owner came and hauled that nightmare away.
