Bulls, Beware!

Some of the events in the following story occurred in a pasture near Enderlin 116 years ago. The facts of it were reported in an obituary in the Ransom County Independent on April 23, 1909. They involved a tragedy where a farmer named E. O. Fausett was killed by his herd bull. In piecing the incident together the authorities stated that Mr. Fausett had walked into his pasture about 4:30 in the afternoon to bring in his herd of milk cows.

As so often happens,  daily rituals like this proceed without much thought or trouble so Mrs. Fausett didn’t think to worry until a half hour later. Something was out of the ordinary with the absence of the usual barnyard commotion at milking time that caused her to look out the kitchen window toward the pasture. 

This scene wasn’t normal! Mrs. Fausett could see the cows were acting strangely and milling about an object lying along the fence line. She ran outdoors, grabbed a pitchfork at the barn and called for the dog to come. An untamed wildness running in the veins of the herd must have agitated them to make her uncomfortable enough to set the dog on them. 

Yes, that object lying there along the fence was her husband and he plainly had been attacked by the herd bull. Maybe he had been trying to reach safety by crossing the fence. We will never know the extent of brutality displayed by the raging bull. On inspection the man’s body displayed bruising and broken bones indicating he had been rolled, head butted, and trampled. 

Mrs. Fausett could see there was no hope for her husband and that he had died in the attack. She left him and returned to the house to make the necessary telephone calls.

Some of this narrative has been imagined with the intention of rendering it to story form, yet it retains the facts. The newspaper called him a prominent farmer in the community. That he was well known and respected can be confirmed by the number of  attendees who packed St. Olaf’s Church for his funeral. 

Mr. Fausett was a Norwegian immigrant who came to this country with his parents in 1866.  This first of several major waves of immigration took place in the 1860s for a surprising reason. Steamships had become a valid way to travel in comparison to sailing ships. A steamer could cross in one week whereas a sailing ship took about two months. A Norwegian source says a large number left Norway, not necessarily because of poverty, but because of the lure of America. 

Reasons why the Fausetts emigrated are probably lost in the mists of history. Upon arrival they lived and worked in various locations, with E. O. finally settling in Liberty Township in 1881 when he filed for a homestead. There he prospered until the bull ended his life.

Was Mr. Fausett wearing something bright red in color? An “old wives’ tale” told us that the color red angered bulls. In fact a story of an enraged bull attacking a red fire truck occurred in Ohio in 1922. The truck on its way to a fire ran into a head butting bull “for the simple reason that Mister Bull, enraged at the fiery red which adorns the fire-fighting apparatus, plunged toward the truck.” That crew took a different route home. Science tells us today that red is not a triggering factor, that bulls are color blind.

Pitchforks became a common defense when facing a bull. After all, the occurrences were often in the barn yard where such things were found leaning in corners. A headline in a Wisconsin paper stated, “Fourteen-Year-Old Lad Attacks Savage Beast With Pitchfork.” A Holstein bull had butted a man and held him against the barn and kept grinding at his chest. The man’s son picked up a pitchfork and started jabbing the bull with it until the father escaped. The bull next charged the son but ran his eye onto one of the fork tines which blinded him.

I had my own experience being chased by a bull while barely escaping. A young lad, I was playing in the barnyard when I spotted our bull pawing dirt with his devilish cloven hooves a short distance away. Something told me I’d better scramble to the top of the barn’s lean-to for safety. Screaming for help, Dad came out of the barn wielding a pitchfork and drove him off. Next day one of Clark Douglas’s cattle trucks drove in the yard and hauled him away to become hamburger. Artificial insemination became our preferred method of breeding the cows.

Even  skilled and experienced bull fighters in Spain meet death. The famous matador Manolete died as he sunk a sword into a bull which simultaneously pierced him with a sharp horn tip. They died together. The U. S. has its form of bullfighters called rodeo clowns. Clowns get caught by bulls, too, and injuries occur. One of them offered a good piece of advice. Don’t try to outrun a bull, they have four legs and we only have two.

And before we go, consider the bull from North Dakota that earned a big name for himself in the sporting world, Little Yellow Jacket. I watched him in the last North Dakota rodeo he appeared  where as usual he bucked off his rider. Only a dozen riders did ride him over the course of his career. The average ride lasted only two seconds. He has been inducted into the animal division of the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame.