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Cowboy Poetry With
Baxter Black
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Theriogenologist |
by Baxter Black |
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Theriogenologist? I was one and didn't even know it! A specialist in animal reproduction. An ovary observer, a diddler of the zygote. One who has devoted his life to preserving pregnancy.. a cow plumber.
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Included in this broad field are embryo transplanters, diagnostic palpaters, infertility detectives, fertility evaluators, artificial inseminators and others identified by their green fingernails and white socks.
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Those folks who practice this profession are an unusual group. They don't wear a tie to work. They approach their business like a professional football player, knowing when the game's over they're gonna look a lot worse. It is not a career for the fastidious.
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Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun would have been good theriogenologists. However, Fred Astaire or Mr. Rogers might feel ill at ease in a pair of muddy five-buckle overshoes with manure in their ear. They would make better equine practitioners.
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People who work at the rear end of a cow develop a similar personality. They're usually "good ol' boy" types who have a high humiliation level. If one were easily embarrassed, under a cow's tail, behind the gun so to speak, is not the place
to be.
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There are dangers. Like the veterinarian who was preg checking one fine afternoon when the cow went down in the chute, breaking his arm. The fractured bone pierced his plastic sleeve and lodged him securely inside the cow like a fishhook. |
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But most injuries are more damaging to one's self esteem. Like Gary, a struggling newlywed who was doing artificial insemination to enhance his meager graduate student income. He arrived at the dairy with only one plastic sleeve in his kit. It lasted for five cows. Gritting his teeth he approached cow number 6 and palpated her bare-handed. Gruesome perhaps, to the non-cowperson, but an accepted alternative to the dedicated theriogenologist. As he began his treasure hunt in the final cow he must have said something "unprofessional" because she kicked him on the inside of the thigh! He was elbow deep in Holstein at the time. She clamped down on his arm as he fell to the ground writhing in pain. |
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Driving home that evening in stinking agony he made a terrifying discovery. He had lost his untarnished, two month-old, 24 karat, 5 year payment plan, once in a lifetime extravagance, diamond studded wedding ring... inside the cow! |
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Next morning he returned to the dairy armed with a metal detector and was seen for days wandering through the fields, going from patty to patty like a beachcomber high on propane fumes. |
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The bride was not happy. The mother-in-law was vindicated, however, since she had warned her daughter not to marry someone who makes a living that no one can pronounce. |
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Read comments or post your own comments to this article at the bottom of this page. |
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Baxter Black, was born in 1945 in a Brooklyn Naval Hospital, NY, as his dad was in the Navy. Baxter likes to say his birthday is on the second Friday of each January. He grew up in Las Cruces, New Mexico and rode bulls in high school and college. As Baxter tells it, he spent most of his working life in the mountains west tormenting cows. Black now lives in Arizona and travels the country tormenting cowboys. He was trained as a large-animal veterinarian at New Mexico State University and Colorado State University, graduating in 1969. His first column was published in July 1980 in the Record Stockman , Denver, Colorado. Baxter explains: "The last company where I was working as a tech veterinarian changed hands and let me go. I was doing speaking on the side and people just kept calling, so here I am." |
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Since then, he has published over a dozen books of fiction, poetry, and commentary. He is a regular commentator for National Public Radio's Morning Edition, and also hosts a syndicated weekly radio program, Baxter Black on Monday, and writes a syndicated weekly DAILY NEWSpaper column, "On the Edge of Common Sense." He also hosts a program on RFD-TV. |
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Baxter Black can shoe a horse, string a barbed wire fence and bang out a Bob Wills classic on his flat top guitar. |
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Copyright © 2009 All rights reserved. The above article is the property of the Author and may not be duplicated or redistributed in any way without permission. |
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