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I grew up on a farm in Oregon, and had nothing to do with sheep. We do have our own problems with cows though.

Admittedly, sheep are the stupidest creatures on the earth (next to turkeys, who drown in the rain cause they can't figgure out that looking UP is a bad idea), but cows aren't any gems either.

-- To scratch an itch, a cow or bull will lean up against any vertical surface they can find, be this a fencepost (with electric fence attached), a feeding truck, or if you stand still long enough they think you're as good as anything.

-- A calf (that's baby cow for all you real city folk) will mistake a bull for his mommy on rare occasion. That's funny as hell to watch.

-- Bulls will frequently (while trying to swat biting insects) smack themselves in those enormous balls hanging between their legs, producing what some of them rodeo boys would call "The perfect riding bull".

The worst though, is when a cow for some reason convinces herself that she's pregenant. Most women can tell by the time 9 months comes around that they're not going to give birth, cows don't sometimes. The result, is called prolapse. What happens is this...

The cow thinks that it's time to give birth. Now, when a cow doesn't have a calf to give birth to, that't means the only thing she has to push out is her uterus. If you catch them in time, you can save the situation, but if not, she'll never be able to produce that little veal stack on hooves again. What it ends up looking like when you do catch it, is a massive pink lump folded into a few sections hanging under her tail. When a farmer sees this, he has two choices.

(1) kill the cow, butcher, and bar-b-que.
(2) fix the situation.

If you catch the cow quickly enough, you can sedate her (lots of drugs), put on a latex glove that goes up to your arm-pit, and physically push her now partially expunged uterus back up inside of her. This feels kind of like putting your hand and most of your arm in a really hot circular vise. Moving the parts around in the cavity is somewhat like trying to organize your keys in someone elses pocket.

I never thought that stuffing my hand up a cow would end up being better than eating steak, but apparently my grandpa did. Compared to that, college is just great.

~JD