Denis Lehane: The calf that hated the Kingdom
And nobody was more concerned about Michael’s condition after the attack than me, for I fear I may have been responsible for the whole thing.
It all began many years ago when a peculiar calf was born on this farm.
Indeed, she needed the assistance of a good vet to be delivered. And as it happens, the vet hailed from Kerry.
As soon as she had been extricated from the cow, I couldn’t help but notice the bad eye the calf threw on the vet. ‘Twas as if she thought the vet had made her delivery difficult, instead of the complete opposite being true.
I said nothing at the time about what I had noticed, for fear that that the vet might think I’m mad in the head.
Anyway, time passed on, and I got mighty interested in the GAA.
I would support the Cork football team like nobody’s business. Wherever they played, there I would be, wearing a sombrero and cheering on the boys in red.
But alas, when they played Kerry, and inevitably lost, t’would be with tears in my eyes that I would return home. And around the yard that evening, I would curse the kingdom from a height.
Again I noticed my calf, by now a young heifer, would always prick up the ears when Kerry was mentioned. ‘Twas as if she had a dark place in her heart reserved for that most noble of places.
So after a spell, I stopped cursing the Kerry football team of a Sunday evening, for fear that my little heifer might be influenced by my less than exemplary behaviour.
Of course the time then came for my heifer to, how should I put this delicately, get jiggy with a bull.
At the time, I had this little Kerry bull floating around the farm, and I figured he might do the job just fine.
Well, I was wrong. Eventually he did the job, but he was the most clumsy and awkward of partners for my heifer.
It took him a long time to get the hang of it, and again I could see that my heifer was far from happy with my choice of mate.
The following spring, a calf appeared. He was a small black Kerry bull calf, the very image of his father, and when my heifer caught sight of her offspring, she blew a fuse entirely.
It was then I decided to rid myself of her, for I knew that she hated everything to do with Kerry.
So I took her to the mart and ordered the auctioneer to announce from his pulpit that she was not suitable for Kerry farmers.
“I can’t say that!” says he. “We will be accused of being racist.”
“Well, on your head let it be, then,” says I.
And so the sale went on and, sure enough, up goes the hand of a cap-wearing farmer who, if he wasn’t Michael Healy-Rae, was the dead spit of him.
“Nothing good will come of this day,” I said to myself as I solemnly made my way home from the mart later that evening.
And sure enough, last week we get the news that poor Michael was attacked by a cow.
So was it any wonder then that the whole episode was so upsetting to me?
For I fear it may well have been my heifer with a hatred of all things Kerry who was responsible for the whole dastardly thing.
