The Duke of Hazard

(The following summarizes my Clinical Pastoral Education Experience)

Daisy could see Farmer McDonald’s breath in the chill morning air.  She had never given birth before, but had witnessed many of her barn mates moan and groan as they flopped about in the hay during the routine yet always precarious ritual of labor.  When ole man McDonald looked into her rheumy brown eyes and gently patted her head --- “It’s OK Daisy, almost there” --- she wondered if he believed animals felt pain.  Daisy felt pain, like her insides were being ripped from the walls of her ribcage, as she began to lose consciousness.  Do animals feel pain? Am I an animal?  And then in the brittle straw she saw this life’s work, covered in blood, a wet lump of nearly unrecognizable flesh.  She had given birth to herself, but not herself, something entirely other, a baby bull calf craning his neck and struggling to stand.

And stand he would, and stand he does, longing for his mother’s teat even during his first dizzy dance.  Here a wobble.  There a wobble.  Old McDonald had a farm, and Duke’s first conscious thought was to run away --- not because he had to, but because he wanted to embrace the freedom that felt intrinsic to his burgeoning strength.  He could not yet walk without falling, but he dreamed of running, rutting, bucking in the knowledge that life was power and power was life.

 “I’m afraid we’ll have to put her down.”  “Birth done killed her”,  the animal in the funny clothes said --- as he put a steel rod to the mother’s head,  and so “BAM” Duke’s first memories of life would forever be colored by death.