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#51023 01/05/02 08:00 PM
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Dear Keiva: You mistake me I admire border collies, only deplore their unhappiness when denied a chance to employ their abilities at herding animals. Hummingbirds I have watched for many hours duelling, but very careful never to injure. Ruby seems a better description. My dictionary says "rufous" is rust color, like William the Conqueror was called "Rufus". For a really mean bird, I have seen kingbirds sit on the backs of eagles, plucking out a stream of feathers, to suggest to the eagle not to trespass on the kingbird's territory.


#51024 01/08/02 03:21 PM
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William Rufus was William II, William the Conqueror's son, who was found dead in the New Forest with an arrow in him in what may or may not have been a hunting accident (I have a vague idea it was deer hunting but it may have been boar hunting).

Bingley


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#51025 01/08/02 03:54 PM
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Dear Bingley: my countenance is rufous and I rue my gaffe. Thanks for the correction.


#51026 01/09/02 12:26 AM
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> No farmer I knew would ever say "the hogs" when referring to a group that he knew contained both genders...

Same like cows and cattle....only city folk refer to a bunch of bovines as "cows".

stales


#51027 01/09/02 12:46 PM
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Stales, that is not quite true... Cows are what we have on the east coast-- Cattle is what they have in Texas.

if you drive from NYC to say Cornell, to say Hi to David and Betsy, what you pass on the way are cows. Up state NY (NYC is downstate) is dairy country. it is udderly clear, that all you see are she cows.

in Texas, the animals you see from your car have horns, (often rather bigs ones) and its not udderly clear which are the she's or he's. if its not clear, they are cattle!


#51028 01/09/02 01:22 PM
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....only city folk refer to a bunch of bovines as "cows".


and in the UK, not only do farmers usually refer to a mixed herd as, " ... a field of cows ..." but one farmer I stayed with in darkest Gloucestershire had the biggest, fiercest Hereford Bull I have ever encountered (or ever wish to!)invariably referred to it as, " ... her ... ", as in, "her be a right bugger to 'andle."



#51029 01/09/02 02:28 PM
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Dear RC: I am really surprised to hear of a Hereford bull being vicious. The first Hereford bull I remember seeing had a girl riding on his back, coming in to be fed. I thought she was making a potentially dangerous mistake. My favorite uncle was a dairyman, and he had warned me never to trust a dairy bull, because they may seem docile, but can without any warning becone life threatening. So when the girl dismounted, I asked her if she had not been taking a foolish risk, and she told me Hereford bulls were pussycats, and easily made pets. We subsequently owned a Hereford bull, and he too was a pet.


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I'm not sure how wise it is to generalize from an n of 2...


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Dear wofahulicodoc: My kids were in 4H for quite a few years, exhibiting beef animals, mostly steers, of course. But we had contact with quite a few beef breeders, and it seems to be the case that beef bulls just are not dangerous, while dairy bulls are. At least that seems to be the situation in US. So I'm not judging just by two specimens.


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I just conferred with my wise aged father and asked, "What do we call groups of those great bovines in the fields?" He said, "The bulls and the cows; the heifers and the calves." And then I asked, "But what do we call the whole group?" He answered, "The herd."

And that's straight out of the horse's mouth, right here in southern Virginia.

DubDub


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