ozarque: Cow-whacking....

ozarque (

ozarque) wrote,
@ 2005-12-02 19:51:00

Cow-whacking....

rbos commented, on the subject of persuading cows to move: "I find that whacking cows with a shovel gets them movin' pretty quick." Which reminded me....

One of the most terrifying things I've ever had to do was to stand in a field -- looking at the video camera and trying to talk without fainting -- when I knew there were live and unrestrained cattle standing behind me. It was part of filming a segment on Ozark English for the PBS "Human Language" series, some years ago, and I'm still amazed to be able to report that I did live through it and I didn't faint. If the creatures behind me had been bears, or dinosaurs, or axe murderers, I'd have been a lot less scared. Scared, sure, but a lot less scared.

I am really afraid of cattle, and locally that's what I'm famous for. "You know that woman that she lives down by the ford and she's scared of cows?" That's me. And so the people at whose farm we were shooting the video (let's call them Frank and Mary to protect their privacy) knew how scared I was, and they were concerned to make me as comfortable as it was possible to do under the circumstances.

The other segment we filmed at the farm was more complicated than just standing around talking. It involved having Mary run a couple dozen cows -- and one huge bull -- down a hill toward me and then divert them into a handling area before they got to me. Mary and Frank had assured me that this bull -- call him Buster -- was "as gentle as a kitten." [The expression "gentle as a kitten" is de rigeur when talking about your bull in the Ozarks. Never gentle as anything else, always gentle as a kitten.]

Mary was running behind the cattle and urging them along with a broom, when Buster suddenly decided he had other ideas. There were big round bales of hay in the field where we were -- incredibly heavy big round bales of hay that you have to handle with winches and forklifts. Buster decided that the thing to do was to go scoop up a bale with his horns, bellow, pitch the bale through the air, bellow some more, and then go get another bale and repeat the process. He did that while Mary got the cows into the chute, and then she went after him. And she ran him down the hill to where the cows were, whacking him on the rear end all the way, and yelling at him: "Dammit, Buster, I knew you were going to disgrace me in front of Suzette! What is the matter with you, anyway, have you lost your entire mind??" And similar warbles. Verbal abuse of a bull, right to my face.

I was awed. Never mind your superheroes. The idea of her whacking that bull's behind with a broom all the way down the hill while he ran for his life -- gentle as a kitten -- and chewing him out at the top of her lungs .... I'd never seen such courage before, nor have I seen it since. I wouldn't have gone near that animal with a machine gun and a shield and a platoon of knights.

[The only thing powerful enough to motivate me to get involved in this fandango was the fact that the film about Ozark English was going to be Part Four of the PBS series, and it was going to demonstrate that speaking Ozark English does not mean that you are ipsofacto ignorant. There were some very nice riffs included that showed the elegance and complexity of Ozark English, and I was willing to do almost anything on their behalf. I was so sorry when the series came out and there'd only been funding enough for Parts One, Two, and Three. The Ozark footage has never been aired. So. I was all that brave -- nothing compared to Mary, but brave for me -- for nothing. Drat.]

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	lyonesse 2005-12-02 07:57 pm UTC (link)
	rofl thanks, that is the best story i have read all day :) :) :) (so the story's not for nothing, even if the footage was....!) (Reply to this)

dorianegray
2005-12-02 08:00 pm UTC (link)

I always wonder why people say "gentle as a kitten" (it's a common phrase here in Ireland, too). In my experience kittens are hyperactive lunatics with imperfect control of their teeth and claws. Cute as all get-out, but not gentle.

(Friends of mine are posting a LiveJournal for their kitten, written in teenage-text-speak, which I find hilariously appropriate for the average kitten's mind-set. If you're interested, the kitten's username is shandri_cat.)

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	mermaidjeans 2005-12-02 09:18 pm UTC (link)
	GMTA! I was going to say that the only gentle kittens I know of are the little scraps of fur and fluff that are under three weeks old. The rest of 'em? Little terrors. I've taken to referring to my mom-and-two-kitten katzen as the Flying Feline Troupe, or FFT for short. And they do. Fly, I mean. With claws out. ducks (Reply to this)(Parent)

	(Anonymous) 2006-11-20 06:47 pm UTC (link)
	::squeaking in here, too:: We say "gentle as a kitten" as well as "gentle as a lamb." My family (dad's side) are from Donegal and settled in the Irish Wilderness (a part of the Ozarks) in the 1880's. I'll call a reddish cow a "roan" and a hound a "kerr." These were "Ozark" terms to me until a couple of years ago when I found out they're Irish. LR (Reply to this)(Parent)

	celticdragonfly 2005-12-02 08:06 pm UTC (link)
	Heh. Gentle as a kitten indeed. Picture a kitten that big. I'd hide. (Reply to this)

	geojlc 2005-12-02 08:19 pm UTC (link)
	Thanks for a huge laugh--you just made my day! (Reply to this)

	wilfulcait 2005-12-02 08:26 pm UTC (link)
	Of course cows are scary. They are the biggest not-properly-socialized animals most of us will ever come in contact with. I wouldn't've wanted to be out in that field with them behind me either. Brave indeed. (Reply to this)(Thread)

yoak
2005-12-02 08:47 pm UTC (link)

I think they are the largest animals with which I've had contact without qualification. Maybe a horse? They're certainly taller, but I would suspect that the cows I've met out-massed the horses I've met. Anyway... your phrasing implies that there are properly-socialized animals that most of us might come in contact with that are larger than cows. What did you have in mind?

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	wilfulcait 2005-12-02 09:04 pm UTC (link)
	Some horses. Although you may be right on the mass, come to think of it. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

foomf
2006-11-14 07:13 pm UTC (link)

Not socialized...

Well, as herd animals, they socialize to one another, but yeah, they don't get the degree of human interaction while very young that teaches them to recognize and use 'language cues'. Just about every other animal that people have domesticated to their use, including elephants, spend that much time around humans. There are some tribal herdspeople in Africa who have that intimate relationship with their cattle, but I don't recall any anthropologist noticing that interaction. Then again most anthropologists are blind, deaf, and confused, having their own set of deeply embedded cultural assumptions. (The whole "Tahiti is a wonderous world of free sex with no taboos" came as a misunderstanding of the response to what was considered an incredibly rude question - total outrageous exaggeration that should make the questioner look like a fool.)

Anyway. Cows. I suspect the steer that tossed Suzanne when she was a child, was not one of those animals which was interacted with a lot. In fact, people don't interact a lot with animals destined for the dinner table. One of the NASTIEST things you can do to a neighbor is to give their children a pet lamb. As a pet, it promptly gets a name, it gets interaction with the children as a fellow sentient, it gets access to human areas. And when it grows up and stops being a cute lamb, you have a sheep, possibly a ram, which thinks it can go inside, and which tends to be a fair drain on resources for a lot of smallish family farms.

I think the steer that tossed Suzanne had a deep, inner distrust of the humans who removed a part of his anatomy (and likely branded him with a red-hot iron) in a rather painful ceremony involving a narrow, noisy metal or wood stock, then shoved him out into field with other young, frightened fellow steers. They seldom get much in the way of loving human interaction; they're food-to-be. So a small human, like any possible animal threat to the herd, gets investigated, challenged, and if it doesn't run away, tossed around until it does run away. After all, a young puma isn't that much bigger than a little girl.

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	ozarque 2005-12-03 01:12 pm UTC (link)
	And yet there are all those paintings where people are having a picnic -- or a young woman is sitting on the grass doing a tasteful watercolor -- in a field full of cows.... (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	wilfulcait 2005-12-03 03:13 pm UTC (link)
	Well. I hoped they looked before they sat down. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	crossfire_ 2005-12-02 08:46 pm UTC (link)
	OMG. "Dammit, Buster! If you really loved me you wouldn't embarass me like this!" Actually "gentle as a kitten" is fairly accurate, as anyone can tell you who has ever been impaled on a dozen or so needle-sharp kitten claws as the sweet lil thang they were playing with suddenly gets in touch with its Inner Tasmanian Devil. (Reply to this)

archangelbeth
2005-12-02 08:48 pm UTC (link)

always gentle as a kitten.

What age kitten? Because the ones in our house include Frick, who attacks without warning, persistently, and with needle-sharp teeth and frequently claws. (Sometimes I clip his claws.)

Little blind kittens are very cute and weak and "gentle," though.

Would anyone like a kitten? We have Frick, Frack, and Dickens (names subject to change in new household), and they just need one more distemper booster... Fully indoor, no fleas, well socialized, and Frick is a loving little maniac when he's not chewing on your fingers. He does that less these days, too.

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	foomf 2006-11-14 07:15 pm UTC (link)
	I would, but alas, Vinnie and Clint would teach it bad habits; Vinnie is entering her Elder phase, and Clint is a somewhat jealous guy who dislikes other cats (he'd be better except the three girl-cats shunned him and attacked him when we first got him.) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	archangelbeth 2006-11-15 01:23 am UTC (link)
	Hee. Alas, Frick and Frack had to go to the local humane society. (It's been many a month since that post!) However, they were accompanied by a large enough check that I have a strong suspicion that the pair got homes. Dickens is still living with us, along with his mother -- they chase each other around the house at high speed. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	foomf 2006-11-15 08:49 am UTC (link)
	Hm. That's what I get for following references :) (Reply to this)(Parent)

	jackiejj 2005-12-02 08:56 pm UTC (link)
	Fascinating and wonderful. I can't decide whom to admire more--Mary for her intrepid bull-whacking, or you for standing in the field even while terrified. I think I vote for you. (Reply to this)

	trinker 2005-12-02 09:05 pm UTC (link)
	The Ozark footage has never been aired. Oh, I could just cry from the frustration of it! I wish it were possible to fund that now, because it's a desperately needed sort of thing. (Reply to this)

	dcseain 2005-12-02 09:25 pm UTC (link)
	Are they dairy cattle, and if so, did the bull happen to be a Guernsey? (Reply to this)(Thread)

	ozarque 2005-12-02 09:40 pm UTC (link)
	Beef cattle, usually; we have almost no dairy cattle in this area. As for the bull, I don't know his denomination, but he didn't look Guernsey to me. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	Learn something new wolfangel78 2005-12-02 09:38 pm UTC (link)
	Cows always look so placid, though, and stupid and, well, harmless. Ah, city life. The closest I come to cows really is when they're part of my shoes or of my dinner. (Reply to this)

	aenodia 2005-12-02 09:43 pm UTC (link)
	Thanks for the word picture of Mary chasing the bull and whacking him. Cows are big scary animals and some of them have horns. Why would any sane person want to be in a field with them let alone with their back turned. I think you gave just about the only reason I could think of but I don't know what it illustrates about Ozark English. (Reply to this)

	naamah_darling 2005-12-02 09:45 pm UTC (link)
	That's a truly wonderful story, and a truly remarkable display of courage. I admire Mary with her broom, but clearly she was both fearless and accustomed to cows. What you did was far, far harder. I do wish I could see that footage. (Reply to this)

	cynthia1960 2005-12-02 10:47 pm UTC (link)
	Having been in contact with all five pointy ends of various kittens, that phrase bemuses me. I think of the one little furball that muckled onto my angle and started biting. (Reply to this)

	(Anonymous) 2005-12-03 12:38 am UTC (link)
	it was going to demonstrate that speaking Ozark English does not mean that you are ipsofacto ignorant I note from your previous post that OzE speakers seem to assume that speakers of other dialects are ipso facto rude. That seems no less obnoxious than the assumption of ignorance. (Reply to this)(Thread)

ipso facto rude

ozarque
2005-12-03 01:38 pm UTC (link)

Dear Anonymous, I apologize for producing language that can be understood to mean that speakers of dialects other than Ozark English are ipso facto rude. That's clumsy of me. For the record -- although without intonation you have no way to judge whether I'm being truthful or not -- I make no such assumption. Even when people post comment after comment that would -- in my dialect -- have the appearance of being rude, my first assumption always is that the difficulty is not in the person but in the language. It takes a very large corpus of such comments to convince me that actual intentional rudeness is there, as opposed to dialect differences.

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Re: ipso facto rude
(Anonymous)
2005-12-03 11:13 pm UTC (link)

I beg your pardon; my comment was unclear.

I did not mean to suggest that I thought _you_ were assuming speakers of other dialects were ipso facto rude. I have already observed that you always assume "that the difficulty is not in the person but in the language."

What I meant to convey was that your "cows" example gave me the impression that other inhabitants of the Ozarks, upon hearing from me a polite (by my dialect's standards) utterance like "I think your cows are in my yard," would respond by jumping to the conclusion that the utterance was deliberately rude rather than non-Ozark. This struck me as being (very roughly) parallel to the fact that if a visitor used cerain Ozark dialect features around here, some people would jump to the conclusion that the visitor was ignorant, rather than merely using another dialect.

I'm sorry for causing confusion.

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Re: ipso facto rude

conuly
2005-12-04 05:07 am UTC (link)

I'm not sure the two cases are the same.

Most people don't consider that dialect consists of things other than how you pronounce words, and certain word choices. If pressed, they might concede that it consists of grammar - but that's hard. I've heard people even say that using double negatives is a sign of retardation!

And as hard as it is to convince people that yes, dialects vary a lot in their grammar, I'll take any bet that it must be harder to convince them that they can vary in terms of what's considered polite or not.

So the first group is failing to accept something that's a bit foreign to them. The second group is failing to accept something that's *very* foreign to them.

Additionally, it's not just the Ozarkers (is that the word?) who think that people who don't speak their dialect are rude. By the comments to these past two posts, a lot of people think that the Ozark style is just as rude. So both sides consider the other rude, that's equal. However, it's very unlikely that a speaker of any non-standard dialect is going to consider people who speak the standard dialect to be ignorant or retarded. They might think a lot of things about that dialect, but ignorant isn't going to be one of them. And that's *not* balanced.

Of course, I don't really know what I'm talking about here.

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	Re: ipso facto rude (Anonymous) 2005-12-04 10:07 pm UTC (link)
	the Ozarkers (is that the word?) It must be: Suzette uses it. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	Re: ipso facto rude ozarque 2005-12-06 03:09 pm UTC (link)
	I think your comment demonstrates that you for sure do know what you're talking about. Thank you for posting it. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: ipso facto rude conuly 2005-12-10 06:53 pm UTC (link)
	grins I know. But I've long since learned that hedging my bets with "I don't really know" not only garners me correction when I make a mistake (in a way that's polite, and not rude), but also keeps spammy trolls from harassing me. Especially in linguistics. And I don't know everything, anyway, so I might as well admit it. (Reply to this)(Parent)

Re: ipso facto rude

ozarque
2005-12-04 02:00 pm UTC (link)

Ah -- now I understand. Thank you for the clarification.

You may well be right. Depending. More likely is that any Ozarker hearing something like your example would immediately think, "Oh. City person." And what happened next would then depend on what sort of moral framework the Ozarker lived by. (There are just as many obnoxious and objectionable people in the Ozarks as there are anywhere else.) Usually the recognition that a city person was talking would -- the first time or two -- get a response like "Sorry about that. I'll come get them." From the third time on, things would be different.

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	Re: ipso facto rude (Anonymous) 2005-12-04 10:06 pm UTC (link)
	Usually the recognition that a city person was talking would -- the first time or two -- get a response like "Sorry about that. I'll come get them." I'm glad to hear they're willing to give outsiders a break, at least till we have time to get acclimated. That's polite of them. Thank you for the exlanation. (Reply to this)(Parent)

Cattle/other large animals

dragonet2
2005-12-03 03:12 am UTC (link)

I've had contact with a lot of large livestock, between family owning them and having the horseback riding fetish pretty bad as a child, and a father who would pay for one kind of outside activity.... i took riding lessons from 7 on. But I'm respectful of them, well, they're all larger than humans.

I've been around both mean and/or wild cattle, and very tame, pet,purebred cattle. I've been around horses that I'd sincerely rather see canned than try to handle/ride.

And I'd be seriously nervous having someone run cattle that are unknown to me in my direction, you get the prize girl. And especially a bull! (though one of my dad's pasture tenants had a bull that was a hazard because he was too tame. He wanted to be rubbed and scratched, and would LEAN on you to get the attention.)

but that bull was a total exception. You should have gotten a prize.

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	ethesis 2005-12-03 04:15 am UTC (link)
	I am so sorry they never did part four. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	ozarque 2005-12-03 01:40 pm UTC (link)
	Me too. It had a wonderful sequence with an Ozark English auctioneer at a cattle auction. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	ethesis 2005-12-04 04:21 am UTC (link)
	Well, with any luck it may yet show up as a sequence. BTW, http://ethesis.blogspot.com/ finally has some posts that you might find intereting. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	posts at your blog ozarque 2005-12-09 02:02 pm UTC (link)
	I have been reading your posts, although I'm sometimes slow to get to them. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: posts at your blog ozarque 2005-12-09 02:07 pm UTC (link)
	I should also let you know that I've never been able to leave a comment at your blog. I can't get past the word-identification test, where commenters are asked to type in the letters they see in the box. With my browser, that box always appears to be blank. (Reply to this)(Parent)

voidampersand
2005-12-03 06:05 pm UTC (link)

I've been on a number of hiking trips in the Sierras where we had run-ins with bears. My dad's friend Bob was quite the mountain man and a real character, and he showed us how to deal with them. The key techniques are stone-throwing and verbal abuse. Both work at a distance, which is a good idea when dealing with bears. I still cringe at the memories of some of the words that were said, but they were effective.

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	la_chispa 2005-12-04 01:22 am UTC (link)
	dying laughing (Reply to this)

kayshapero
2005-12-04 02:46 am UTC (link)

Offhand, I'd say if I had to listen to hooves thundering down the hill towards and behind me while I was having to speak for the cameras, they'd have to point them up the nearest tree... :)

Agree on "gentle as a kitten". I wouldn't want a kitten that size anywhere near me!

Reminds me of the time Dad tells me he and Grandpa were out in the corn field when a stray cow got in. Grandpa grabbed Bossy's tail with one hand and an ear of corn with the other and proceeded to lambaste her into exiting at speed. Dad was far too busy hanging onto the fence and laughing himself sick to assist as they flew by. I think if he ever got hold of a time machine the first thing he'd do is go back to that scene with a camera.

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Ozark English grammar point

acw
2005-12-06 05:01 pm UTC (link)

I was all that brave ... for nothing.

I wonder if anyone else noticed what bemused me about this sentence. I can't use the "all that" positive-polarity clauses, only in negatives and interrogatives. So I could say "I wasn't all that brave," or "Was I all that brave?" but "I was all that brave" gets a star in my dialect.

Dr. Elgin, can you also use the "any" words with positive polarity? How do you (with your Ozark English hat on) feel about "I have a cell phone anymore", for instance?

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Re: Ozark English grammar point

ozarque
2005-12-06 05:34 pm UTC (link)

I have a feeling that "anymore" is a red herring -- I think that it's lost its polarity, and that the "any" in "anymore" is often vacuous.

To answer your question -- I couldn't say "I have a cell phone anymore," nor do I think any variety of Ozark English would allow that. But I could say (and it's common as pondwater), "Anymore, I use a cell phone."

I think some Rural Ozark English speakers would allow (referring to a small child asking for more of something at the table) "Don't give her some more of that." But for my Urban Ozark English it would have to be "Don't give her any more of that." And I may be wrong about the ROzE example. It seems to me that I've heard similar examples now and then.

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	Re: Ozark English grammar point foomf 2006-11-14 07:45 pm UTC (link)
	It only makes sense to me as "(I don't have a land line any more, now) I have a cell phone" with the "any more" standing in for the rest of it, at the end. (Reply to this)(Parent)

ab_xnfp
2005-12-07 07:17 am UTC (link)

Maybe a letter writing campaign to PBS?

I will say, that during my stint in the Deep East Texas Piney Woods, that I've been asked what some word meant. After answering, being asked why didn't I just say that? I was reduced to shrugging (because i didnt want to insult my then-bf's extended family members). (although he would have).

I'm one of those cursed people that read myself into my vocabulary and I mispronounce a large number of words. I'm still finding things I slaughter. It really doesnt take much for people to assume ignorance or sheer stupidity. Usually at the drop of a hat.

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	foomf 2006-11-14 07:47 pm UTC (link)
	You'd think, with fewer and fewer people wearing hats, that this wouldn't happen so often, but unfortunately baseball caps seem to fill the role for drop-triggering. (Reply to this)(Parent)

(Anonymous)
2006-11-20 06:44 pm UTC (link)

Hi, I found your journal today and I'm skimming it between work orders.

As for Ozark English, my daddy is from the Irish Wilderness and my mama is from the Bootheel -- I probably speak it. I grew up and still live on the family farm that straddles the Franklin and Jefferson county line.

Bulls, if they know you and depending on their character in general, are not very hard to work with if you bribe them with tasty treats (read: corn). I've had plenty of ornery mama-cows get after me and was narrowly rescued by my dad, Spike, when I was helping drive cattle (by walking and carrying a nylon rod "whip") back when I was about 8 years old. I love cattle but being raised on a farm, I'm not overly attached to that which might end up on my plate. When I was very young, we butchered a calf. At the dinner table I looked up and said, "Grace sure tastes good." My mother cried. My father told me that she was "over-civilized." cheers, LR

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