The Joy of Cows, or Bulls, or whatever it was that did that thing

When I was sixteen, I went to a petting farm with my two best friends, Elaine and Renee. We enjoyed looking at the rabbits and the guinea pigs, horses, ponies, goats, lambs and sheep and eventually cows. The cows were in a shed. One cow. Actually, I can’t remember if it had horns, obviously if it had horns, it was a bull.

It was all on its own in the shed and there seemed to be a few waist high metal bars between us and the cow/bull, so it was a casual but significant separation. We gathered round as it chewed the cud, or grass. It was chewing furiously and while it chewed, it focused on me.

We were like fans round a pop star, admiring it while it chewed and stared. It continued to fix its gaze on me and gave me an evil look. Next minute, it opened its mouth and projectile vomited what it was chewing, straight at me, from about two metres away.

The copious vile smelling substance landed on my upper chest, with a splat. It had the consistency and smell of liquid poo, but it was worse than that. It wasn’t like any human diarrhoea that I’ve ever smelled. Did I happen to mention I was wearing a thick mohair jumper?

The smell was so foul my friends immediately sprang away from me, as if I was a leper. They thought it was hilariously funny. The faeces that had come from the cows/bulls mouth didn’t drip thankfully. Instead, it adhered to my jumper beautifully. Thank God for small mercies.

My friends acted as if I’d vomited onto my own jumper instead of being the victim of an oral assault from a psycho bovine stranger.

To be fair, I was ‘allowed’ back into my friends car. They couldn’t very well leave me at the petting farm, it was miles from anywhere but it wasn’t a pleasant journey home.

When I got home my mum was non too pleased about the stains from a sociopathic bull on my mohair but she put it in a hot wash all the same. I don’t even think it was the hot wash that ruined it, although I’m sure it didn’t help. The vomit and the heat had a debilitating effect on the delicate fibres. The projectile was like acid and seemed to dissolve the cloth. If the vomit didn’t kill my beautiful jumper then the hot wash certainly did. The jumper was never quite the same after that. It was rather bald and thin and exhausted where it should have been delightfully hairy. It was a traumatised mohair.

I learned to distrust cows and young bulls after that. The only other time, I was attacked by an animal in such a way was when I was at Southport Zoo many years later, passing by the chimpanzee quarters with my mum and my husband. The chimps threw their excrement at us, among indulging in other recreational activities. It still wasn’t anywhere as bad as having liquid poo spat at me, exorcist style, at a petting farm. We managed to dodge the chimp poo very successfully. They didn’t have the element of surprise on their side like the young bull.

Now, where’s the joy in this you might say, well, it’s all in the anecdote. I realised I haven’t thought about it in almost forty years, not once, until just now and it made me smile and I suppose it might be funny to an outsider, in a schadenfreud kind of way.