In this grand tradition comes Lee Meyer. By now, there’s a good chance you’ve met him on the internet. “Full grown bull riding shotgun” is what you call clickbait, but unlike most things fitting that description, the bull in the car is even better than the tease. He is an adult male of the Watusi breed, known for their almost comically enormous horns. In the viral video, the bull appears blissful riding down the highway in the retired police cruiser that his human friend has modified to contain his tonnage. The license plate reads: “Boy & Dog.”
Not surprisingly, the sight of Meyer and his pet bull, named Howdy Doody, prompted at least one 911 call. I picture a world-weary dispatcher discovering that, in fact, she had not heard it all before. Officers responding to the summons admitted later that they had expected to find — at most — a little calf. But Howdy Doody’s bulk towered above the car’s roofline, with horns as wide as the hood, and a prodigious streak of digested breakfast running down the rear fender.
Folks in the surrounding countryside were accustomed to seeing Meyer and Howdy Doody at their community parades. Watusi are native to Africa and still relatively rare in the United States, where the grandeur of their horns has made them into rodeo stars. Indeed, when the police pulled Meyer over, the old Crown Victoria was still sporting the Best Car Entry award from the recent Big Rodeo parade in Burwell.
A sedan with half the roof and windshield sliced away to make space for a large animal stall, containing a monstrous beast with a cheerful disposition, is exactly the sort of parade feature that keeps America daffy and great. Let other nations goose-step. We’ll take the shiny fire engine with little kids tossing candy from it, and the girls in braces twirling batons, and the grown men driving figure eights in tiny cars, and the eccentric neighbor who enjoys taking his pet bull for a ride.
But the Norfolk authorities challenged the wisdom of getting the contraption out on the highway. And I must say, I wouldn’t want to see a Watusi bull in my side mirror. After warning him of numerous safety infractions, the police asked Meyer to turn around and head home to Neligh, some 30-plus miles to the west, and Howdy Doody’s visit to town came to a peaceful end. He looked happy — and why not? It was a lovely day for a road trip.
The sight of him reminded me of a bull named Ferdinand.
Though he rode from farm to city in a wooden wagon, Ferdinand was equally picturesque, as drawn by Robert Lawson in the classic children’s book by Munro Leaf. A mass of fearsome potential, Ferdinand seemed destined for combat in the bull ring. But much like Howdy Doody, his nature was gentle and placid. He preferred to sit peacefully and smell the flowers.
Published amid the brutal Spanish Civil War, Leaf’s parable of the bull who would not fight stirred controversy. It was thought to be subversive to create a pacifist hero for children as the world spun disastrously toward the Second World War.
We finish the book not knowing whether Ferdinand would fight, and fight well, for a cause worthy of his effort. We just know that he wouldn’t fight for pleasure, or to entertain others. He wondered how much joy there could be in needless conflict. In this way, Ferdinand is very much a bull for our times, when merchants of division have turned the nation against itself and made the gloriously diverse and even eccentric life of democracy into a blood sport. Perhaps his spiritual heir, Howdy Doody, can road-trip to Washington sometime.
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