The safe capture of a bull on the loose in Birmingham has received a lot of media coverage. The Express newspaper is predictably, reliably hysterical in its tabloid reporting, talking of “carnage” and the bull’s “rampaging” through either a suburb or Birmingham city centre depending on which part of the report you believe. No carnage, no rampaging, just a bit of a traffic jam. Some say the bull must have escaped from an abattoir but it is a “Spanish fighting bull” with horns, so that seemed unlikely but he isn’t he’s a Dexter, our smallest native breed, cattle which are bred for beef and milk.
The picture above is not of him of course, but of a calf I saw at Greenham Common recently.
The response was humane, unlike the treatment of the two cows who were dealt with in the home counties by being rammed by police vehicles, see here:
Police ram cow – again – Animal Wild
There is a perfect outcome: the bull will live its best life at Hillside Animal Sanctuary in Norfolk.
See Animal Wild.
Much has been made in the context of Birmingham’s Bull Ring, named for the practice of bull-baiting going back centuries and only banned in 1835. A very large bronze sculpture, “The Bull” by Laurence Broderick, was installed in 2003. With apologies to the sculptor and any Brummies who are proud of it, to my eyes it is truly ugly, a sort of distorted cartoon version of the animal. And what a strange and unsavoury thing to memorialise and celebrate.
Leave a Reply