The big tree at Big Tree Park, Glendora, CA. CarolAnn and I lived half a block away. Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash
I wish I knew more about the lives of my parents and theirs. My dad, born in 1929, was of a generation that believed children should be seen and not heard. It sounds mean but it was common sense at the time. Dad just figured if I were going to be in the room with adults it would be better for all of us if I sat quietly and just listened. I could learn and they wouldn’t be bothered by my childish interruptions. That probably makes some sense but it didn’t allow me to ask questions.
The attitude extended to what amounted to an information blackout. The grownups wouldn’t tell me much about their younger lives. They’d drop a little nugget here and there but if I asked a follow-up question or two we soon got to the point where I was told, “That was a long time ago. Go outside and play.”
My childhood was a long time ago and I still want to know more about the people who gave me life, loved, and taught me. That’s why I write these essays so that my kids and theirs can know me better than conversation ever allowed.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could learn about our ancestors back many generations if our grandparents could introduce us to theirs and so on over the decades and centuries past? If we could get an idea of who we are and why we belong here, wouldn’t we take ourselves a bit more seriously? Maybe we’d try a little harder to be worthy of the chain that binds the family to humanity.
We are all the sum of many; we are each the result of thousands of loves.
A group of these critters is called a herd of cattle. What’s the word for just one of them? Give up?
Nothing. There is no word for just one.
It’s shocking.
American is the most common form of the English language spoken worldwide. Depending on who you ask it’s composed of 750,000 to a million words, yet not one of them describes a single animal of the bovine species.
But get this: there actually is a term to describe such a word that has no singular form: cattle is what’s known in pointy-head language circles as an “uncountable noun”.
I suppose you think this doesn’t matter a hill of beans but it’s the sort of thing that can keep me awake at night.
I fancy myself a writer. Consider this sentence I just made up:
While riding right flank on the herd Slim noticed one animal that appeared to be limping badly and falling behind.
That’s fine as far as it goes but if I’m forced to come up with a synonym in the next paragraph or two to avoid the redundant noun, “animal”, I’m screwed.
The thing is, to identify a single animal (see what I mean about redundancy?) in a stockyard you have to know its age, gender and personal sexual history.
Ridiculous.
A cow is an adult female that has birthed calves. A cow that isn’t yet a mommy is called a heifer, but if she has had one calf, she’s sometimes referred to as a first-calf heifer.
A heiferette (swear to God, I’m not making this shit up) is a heifer that has calved once and can’t calve again – probably had her tubes tied after that first ordeal – while a maiden heifer refers to an animal that isn’t pregnant and presumably never had the pleasure of the opportunity to become so.
(I haven’t done enough research yet but I assume, given a few more years of celibacy, this poor beast will be referred to as an old maid heifer.)
Don’t these terms seem a lot more specific than necessary when we’re just looking for a generic word for a single animal without bothering to give each of them their own names and count the notches on their bedposts?
Before you roll your eyes and explain that these terms are strictly used in the cattle trade, I get it. But they trade horses, too, and a single horse is a horse regardless of its private parts and romantic past.
A young bull being transformed into a steer is what cowboys call, “nut-cutting time.” I’m sorry. I should have posted a warning.
Studly males, of course, are bulls who escaped the ignominy of becoming steers, those poor young dudes who never had the opportunity or pleasure and never will.
Young ‘uns are variously called calf, yearling, short and long-yearling. (What, no toddlers?)
You may also come across the term springer. This can be used to describe a cow or heifer that is close to calving. I don’t know why.
When a female is born as the twin of a bull she will usually be infertile. In these cases, the animal will often be referred to as a freemartin. I have no clue where the hell that came from and now I don’t care a hill of beans, either.
CarolAnn and I have two female dogs and a female cat, known independently by their names or the simple, singular nouns, dog and cat.
None of them has ever had the opportunity or pleasure either, but with all due respect that is none of your business.
With apologies to David Clarke, who inadvertently provided the excellent definitions used in this piece from his page: Understanding Cattle Terminology.
