That Brahma Bull Jumped the Fence

by Douglas Fodge



Mama yelled loudly, and then she shouted for Mack and me to run to the cart parked at the end of the cucumber patch. Mack had almost finished dragging the sacks of cucumbers and loading them on to the cart when this urgent instruction came. He had tied Maude’s (the horse) reins to a tree limb while he loaded the cart. The Brahma (pronounced braymer by some Texans) bull was running at a fast trot trying to see what was going on, but we beat him to the cart and scrambled to the top of the sacks. Mack, who could run much faster than us, had stopped long enough to pick up some small rocks and threw these at the bull as it closed on us, all the while untying Maude’s reins from the tree limb. By the time we were atop the cucumber sacks, the bull was snorting and pawing the dirt from about 15 to 20 feet away, and Maude was wild-eyed and raring to go. She didn’t want any part of that bull, and her sentiments were exactly mine.

This was the meanest Brahma bull around. He had already cornered and hurt a few cowhands, and rumors were afloat that he had battered and penned his owner twice in brush piles. He was certainly a crippled man. The bull had never killed anyone, but he was fully capable of such, according to our father. He knew about bulls, and he had had a couple of confrontations with this one already while on some of his hunting forays in its turf. In fact, he had once peppered the bull with birdshot from his shotgun in order to keep it from getting too close and delayed long enough to scramble under or through a fence to safety. The bull was as tall as Maude, and the hump on his back made him appear even taller, but he was not quite as heavy as Maude. He could run like a deer and had either jumped or broken the 4-strand, barbed wire fence separating the cucumber patch from the neighbor’s place about like a deer could leap over it, except he probably weighed 1,200-1,500 lbs, if not more. This was one mean animal, and Daddy had warned us repeatedly about not veering over into his territory. We were face-to-face with the beast, and he was more frightening in real life than I could have imagined. No one ever needed an imaginary, scary monster when a mean Brahma bull was in their midst.

As Mama climbed on top the sacks she had a garden hoe in her hand, but I don’t know where it came from, and armed with the hoe, she was barking orders to Mack to drive Maude as fast as possible to the gate leading into our main pasture and on to the house. At the same time Mama yelled at the bull that if he dared come one step closer she would chop off his head. Mind you, his head was formidable and fully equipped with a set of big, stubbed-off horns, either broken off in a fight or partially dehorned. Since those days I’ve seen feature films showing a mother Wolverine or Badger defending their young against attack by some Grizzly bear, and that depicted our situation, at least from this first-grader’s eyes. Mama, all 100 lbs of her, was barking orders for her two cubs to escape danger and all the while ready to beat up the Brahma bull with a dad gum garden hoe. It’s laughable now, but at the time it was frightening to me. I don’t think she and Mack were nearly as scared as I was, but even they weren’t acting too casual.

We usually didn’t leave the gate open between the cucumber patch and the main pasture because the cows would get out, but this time Mack hadn’t closed it when he came through with Maude hitched to the empty cart. The gate was only a short distance away, and Maude was already near top speed (while pulling about 1,500 lbs of cucumbers and 230 lbs of humans, including at least one very scared kid, in the cart) by the time we passed through the opening. The bull was behind us, and he occasionally came very close to either the cart or Maude, but stopped short of contact each time. Once, he got too close for Maude’s comfort, and she tried but never failed to kick him since the harness and the traces interfered with her kicking ability. He might still be trying to recover if she had connected with her massive hooves on the end of those long legs. Fortunately Maude neither stumbled nor fell and continued the dash to the house, about ¼ mile away. Suddenly the bull wheeled around and raced for a pile of cucumbers that spilled from one of the sacks. We were hanging on for dear life and amazingly enough the cart didn’t wreck on the way to the house. I never knew, but the bull either didn’t eat any of the spilled cucumbers or gobbled them down in one or two bites for he was soon racing full tilt after us with ears laid back and eyes wildly flared. It was just dusky dark, and due to his whitish, gray coloring we could see him plainly.

In the brief interlude of time that the bull checked out the pile of cucumbers, Mama realized that he wanted our cucumbers, not us. That logic didn’t help me very much even though she was trying to console and calm me all the while! She untied one of the sacks and threw several large cukes at the bull. This effort distracted him enough for Maude to race to the house, but the beast wasn’t through with us just yet. Mama told Mack to pull the wagon alongside the fence separating our yard from the pasture, unhitch Maude and for us to either jump over the fence or go through a little gate, if we could there in time. With Mama pelting the bull with delicious cucumbers, Mack was able to unhitch Maude, and she immediately ran away at top speed, a portion of the harness and her collar still intact. The bull ignored Maude, but kept his attention riveted on the cart. As far as I was concerned I would have happily allowed the bull to have my share of the cucumbers.

Mack, followed by me, hopped off the cart over the fence into the yard, and Mack went inside to get Daddy’s double-barreled, loaded shotgun. Meanwhile, Mama tried to get off the cart and over the fence without catching her skirt on the barbs of the top wire (that’s right, she picked cucumbers in a cotton dress). All of us ended up on to the back porch. As all of this was taking place, Daddy’s hounds (I don’t know how many of them were tied to various posts, limbs etc. to keep their infighting to a minimum) were barking at the top of their collective lungs, straining at their leashes and spoiling for a good fight with that bull. Just then Mack appeared at the door, apparently armed to the teeth with that double-barreled shotgun. From Mack, “Mama, you want me to shoot him?” “No, don’t shoot him ‘cause I don’t think he wants to deal with these dogs. He just wants the cucumbers and will probably leave in a little while anyway if he can’t get any of them” came her reply. The bull didn’t know it at the time, but Mack, though only 13, was a crack shot and with the long barrels of that shotgun, two rounds of number 4 shot would surely have messed up that bull’s hide, if not seriously hurt him, at close range. I wasn’t hanging around on any porch to wait for the Brahma bull to get me so I ran into the house and watched from about as far away from the action as I could.

After about 30 minutes of the bull circling, snorting, pawing and always with a watchful eye directed toward Daddy’s hounds (all of whom were eager for a good fight) or Mack and Mama, the bull gave up his unknown objective and trotted about 50 – 75 yards away. Before he trotted away to watch them, he came close enough a couple of times for Mama to swat at him, once with the garden hoe and another time with her broom. He watched intently as they heaved the sacks of cucumbers over into the yard. They seemed almost causal about unloading the cucumbers, but not me; I was still shaken to the core.

I didn’t sleep much that night, and afterwards I occasionally had nightmares about a Brahma bull crashing through the fence onto our back porch and trying to get into our house. I never saw him again, and no one talked much about the episode so I concluded years later that I was the only one really frightened by the bull. I always liked to imagine that the Brahma bull shied away from the Fodge’s cucumber patch afterwards because he realized just how close a call he had that dusky summer evening; either from a 125 lb, thirteen-year-old boy armed with a big shotgun or a 100 lb, determined mother bent on chopping him to pieces with a garden hoe. From that day forward, I rarely doubted Mama’s sincerity or determination when she told me she was going to do something.