The animals have had about enough of us, I guess. The latest weird story of animals attacking:
An Indonesian villager had to be rushed to hospital after a horse bit off one of his testicles during a freak attack.
The 35-year-old man was unloading sand from a horse-drawn cart at a construction site in Sulawesi earlier this week when the attack occurred, Indonesia’s state-run news agency Antara reported.
A witness said the animal suddenly lunged at the man, sinking its teeth into his crotch.
Shocked bystanders loaded the man into a car to take him to hospital, before one noticed a piece of flesh on the pavement.
“Luckily the horse did not chew up or swallow his testicle, but spit it onto the pavement,” the bystander was quoted as saying.
That last little detail just hammers home the contempt that horse had for the human.
So…is about half my readership cringing and doubling over in sympathetic agony right now?
</a>?
Sure I’m cringing in sympathetic agony, but I’m also marveling over the quote “Luckily the horse did not chew up or swallow his testicle, but spit it onto the pavement.”
That must be very unusual thing to say. I truly believe that very, very few people throughout history have said that sentence. For some reason I love really odd sentences like that.
I think you’ve raised an interesting question about Gender demographics amongst your readers.
[melbrooks] “Blücher!” [/melbrooks]
No kings,
Robert
Bet the horse won’t swallow Rocky Mountain oysters either.
If someone made me pull around a cart all day I’d bite off his testicle too.
I bet that’s the last time he keeps apples in his pocket, too!
I’m betting Pharyngula readership is about 80% male. Steve’s Conjecture, that be.
PZ found this story during his routine Google search of :
“Indonesian villager” AND “penis” AND “horse”
Janette is having Santini’s tomatoes in a nice salad.
Hm.. I guess I’ve been completely desensitized to testicle violence, because I had no negative reaction to this story whatsoever.
Proving that the horse is not a meat-eating baramin.
I’m not even slightly surprised. Horses can be nasty bastards.
I’m not sure I’ve said ‘Oh..Nononononono…” that many times to my monitor before.
Plus, the unintelligible groaning – you know, the one that most men make when they see/hear something like this.
if the horse is a gelding, he’s even.
Am I wrong to thing this is very funny? I mean, seriously – the horse spat this guy’s testicle out. They actually had to mention that the horse hadn’t chewed it. ::dries eyes::
Where the Hell did you find this, PZ?
The horse went nuts!
I have nothing intelligent to say, so I’ll simply comment thusly: I LOLed.
Poor bastard’s going to go through life cringing every time anyone says something like, “That was a right balls-up.”
The animals are rising up. No doubt this was in response to Santino’s castration. We’re doomed!
Anyone thinking herbivore = harmless rather deserves what they get. Probably a good idea idea to chat to a farmer, etc, before you decide to enslave an animal.
What I want to know is, why is it LUCKY that the horse spat out an intact nut? It’s not like they’re going to put it back in and sew the guy’s junk up like he’s an anatomically correct Raggedy Andy doll.
Obviously, I also had nothing intelligent to say.
Maybe a self-defense instructor or something…at the very least, a dude that can teach you how to dodge coconuts and stones. And maybe wear a cup made of steel.
WHEN will alternative medicine get the RESPECT that it deserves?!!
Fuck dude! What the hell? I’m getting ready for bed. Now I’m gonna have nightmares.
Check out Shel Silverstein’s “Lafcadio, The Lion Who Shot Back” http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Lafcadio-The-Lion-Who-Shot-Back/Shel-Silverstein/e/9780060256760/
I guess the guy will stop keeping sugar cubes in his pockets now.
In the words of my girlfriend, “Why would a horse do that? That’s not what horses do.” In my words, “What the hell? That’s horrifying!”
This story is just nuts.
I’m female and I said ‘ouch’ and cringed in sympathy.
Then I giggled.
I guess this guy qualifies for the Darwin Awards, and on the 200th Anniversary too.
Come on, Someone had to day it.
For wrpd @28:
Wocka wocka wocka!
Mozglubov, maybe your girlfriend has not worked around a large variety of horses?
I mean, I’ve been pressed in a variety of places, stepped on, and picked up by one cheek (backside…). I didn’t know many horses that bit people except for the one who grabbed my butt while I was getting on, so I guess I was lucky. But I’ve seen them bite one another in ways that, if they were biting a human, it would have taken a chunk out.
And my father has horror stories about having to work horses when he was a boy, cheap labor and not able to make the horses stop if they tried to harm him. (horses were more valuable than he was. Made my taking up riding, etc. totally horrifying to him.)
I’ll get you, mirror neurons!
Actually, I believe the probability that they will be able to reattach it and restore function is pretty high. Provided it’s in tact, and he got to the hospital within an hour or so of the attack.
My grandparents’ horse bit my cousin’s lower lip off. Plastic surgery fixed her lip, fortunately.
But I’m still puzzled by the “luckily” statement in the report.
The Bad Horse song came to mind here.
Thoroughbred of Sin, indeed.
It should go without saying that a well-treated, well-trained horse won’t bite a human intentionally. An aggressive horse like an aggressive dog is usually a good indicator that the owner is not a nice person. So I suspect this horse was getting even just like the coconut tossing monkey.
Notice earlier I said intentionally? My family has always had horses and me and my brother grew up around them. When my brother was 5 he was taunting one of our horses by showing her a carrot and then pulling it away (little boys can do some dumb things) and she got annoyed reached out and grabbed the carrot, the tip of my brothers thumb went with it. Pretty scary for my brother but he ended up fine.
Cringing and doubling over in sympathetic agony? Are you kidding? This is fantastic! This horse now has a place in my Equine Pantheon between Mr. Ed and Clever Hans. Does he have a name, too?
Plus, this incident finally explains to me what women see in horses.
That guy had it easy. Check out this story from last year….
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1221513.ece
Garrett is right! Horse are evil monsters out to take over the world. Or at least TunFaire. Apparently starting in Indonesia.
The testicle aspect goes nicely with some research into roosters that was on seed a couple of weeks ago.
Apparently masculine behaviour and personality continue if you reattach testicles -anywhere-, in the research they were popping the testes back into the abdominal cavity and ended up with creatures that were behaviourally and physically roosters rather then capons. (except for not having working genitals anymore).
So, the testicle being intact would be useful. Slice the guy open and toss it into the gut cavity and he would still be a “he” with the behaviours and personality to match[1], even if the scrotum was impossible to repair.
On the other hand if it only bit off one, well – you have a spare.
[1] Probably. The experiments were on roosters, not people, not even mammals.
Are you sure this guy was not a psychotic horse-raping weirdo?
It’s icky, no matter what.
Not even a slight shiver
That same thing almost happened to Scott Tenorman.
Great balls of fire, I had to cross my legs while contemplating this one.
While it’s true that “misbehaving” animals have often been mistreated, it’s not always the case.
Individual animals have different personalities, and those personalities don’t always match up with what humans think of as nice.
I love my cat, I dote on him, I have plenty of cat experience including some with cats that were neurotic and had been abused… so I know how to deal with them… but yet my current cat, though sweet and cute, decides at least once a day that I need to be disciplined if not outright killed. My arms and legs are always covered with scars and scabs.
No figuring what exactly is going on in his little furry head.
And here they are, celebrating:
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/hestekor
Dude, this is so obvious I hardly need to say it, but this God turning all of nature, which he gave to us to be our servant, against us because you Americans, formerly the most devout nation on earth, have become irreligious and don’t spend enough time praying any more.
On your knees, sinners, if you value your family jewels.
“Luckily the horse did not chew up or swallow his testicle, but spit it onto the pavement,” the bystander was quoted as saying.
That last little detail just hammers home the contempt that horse had for the human.
Not contempt, distaste. What more proof do you need of God’s wise design? He deliberately made human male testes unpleasant-tasting, to deter casual snacking by curious ungulates.
@46: I think you’ll find that it’s what’s going on at the end of his legs: twenty self-sharpening hypodeemic nerdles, each tipped with a load of antigens and anything interesting he’s recently walked on.
Cats contain the souls of departed Klingons.
OT
The Jesus, Food, Zombie, Grilled Cheese Sandwich Connection
radio expose: download from:
http://acksisofevil.org/innerside.html
The animals are rising up – protect your homes….
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/man-wrestles-kangaroo-in-canberra-home-20090309-8szb.html
“So…is about half my readership cringing and doubling over in sympathetic agony right now?”
And the rest are snickering wickedly.
Jafafa Hots, #46
It’s play, he loves you. Cats play rough, very rough. If you think he’s being mean to you, you should see how hard they play with other cats. And that is nothing compared to how much damage they can do when the attack is business.
For the evening crazies I recommend a few toys. Something he can focus on instead of you. And since he’ll insist on interacting with you, add some string or yarn or a laser pointer.
And a pair of sturdy gloves, because there will be times when only mauling you will make him happy.
@Frasque. I know! I had a welsh mountain pony as a kid and he broke four of my toes and tried to bite my every day. Why do people think that using something that has a mind of its own as a vehicle is still a good idea?
Yes, I am now cringing and doubling over in sympathy pain. I can’t and don’t want to imagine the pain this poor man went through. He was trying to ease the horse’s pain for gods sake!
“Horse in Distress” by Iva Ballov >.>
Alan, it sometimes starts as play, but then he gets carried away and loses it… other times it doesn’t seem to be play at all.
He normally doesn’t meow much, but he’ll start caterwauling and yeowling at me, and his eyes become black basketballs. Same thing you hear when two cats outdoors are fighting and defending territory, etc. He bites viciously, trying to tear skin out… he just goes psycho. NOT the hind leg kicking kind of play.
Not me – I may be male (well, actually, I definitely am male), but I’m cheering on the horse. Who knows what (s)he was subjected to to react that way.
Equus
I understand one Aussie newspaper covered this story with the headline:
Horse bites nut, bolts
Now, that’s journalism
Hee-Hee. I see from post #44 that I’m not the only sicko who immediately thought of South Park when I read this. “Scott Tenorman Must Die” is probably my favourite episode of all time (except for the scientology episode, perhaps).
I’m going to sue the local newspaper, the Worst (or rather, West) Australian for psychological damage it caused me this morning. A sub-editor headlined the article of this story with; “Horse chews nut, bolts”, so naturally I read it. I was drinking a cup of coffee at the time, and it went everywhere.
I’ve been avoiding horseback riding my whole life and now I’ve even more reasons. My girlfriend once tried to persuade me otherwise but now I know better! No way I’m going near any of those beasts.
@SteveN:
Yep, southpark was my second thought.
re #44 and #66 :
was the band Radiohead around, by any chance ? :D
In other news, the exact phrase “Luckily the horse did not chew up or swallow his testicle, but spit it onto the pavement.” now has over 400 results on Google, which is probably the most awesome bit of trivia ever.
If flocks of birds start to gather around me, I’ll be really worried…
PZ should watch out. He’s horning in on Tim Bedore’s Animal Conspiracy territory. He’s up in Minneapolis, too, so it’d be easy to hunt PZ down and contemplate speaking sternly before turning around and going home.
Jafafa Hots @ 46,
I just want to join those who have pointed out that horses are individuals and it is not always an issue if misuse/abuse. Having worked with horses in my youth, I have had some that were the smoothest critters going. Others would bite, kick, try to press you against the wall and more. One trainer was damn neigh killed by the resident loco stallion. Just depends – they ain’t all my friend Flicka.
Um…that should be nigh – not neigh. ‘Tis O.K. – just horsin’ around.
I do not understand the desire to own animals. Unless said creature performs a specific constructive or useful task, owning one simply to invest an emotional attatchment serves no purpose.
So, did they reattach it or something?
Arthur Machen wrote a story called “The Terror”. It was a bit like that. Except, of course, that Machen didn’t write about testicles.
That’s what you get for unloading sand without any pants on.
Or did the horse chew through those?
I was quite disturbed and a little saddened while I read this article, the pain and agony he must have suffered…
and the man might have been hurt too
Must have been a descendant of one of these horses.
http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_herc_lab8.htm
When working with an angry horse,
(As well with donkeys, asses, mules)
You’ll find it is the prudent course
To armor-plate your family jewels.
Or else, bring gauze and lots of ice
For when your nuts head further south.
I know this must be good advice–
I got it from the horse’s mouth!
I hear the guy’s a real wingnut…
I love this place! For another night, I’ll be able to regale my family at dinner with a story of animals fighting back.
And the commentators here are the funniest on the planet.
Horror author Arthur Machen was apparently a visionary; his short 1917 novel The Terror predicted the animal uprising…
@72
I’m guessing no. Seems from the story, the other one is fine and that’d be enough for normal functioning. To paraphrase Sex and the City: “No one I’ve ever known has said, ‘oooo look at him, he has such a full scrotum'”.
And if the SATC reference didn’t make it obvious, I may be of the female persuasion, but I still muttered to my screen “Damn, that’s gotta hurt.”
“Luckily the horse did not chew up or swallow his testicle, but spit it onto the pavement,” ROFL, I’m not sorry to laugh, humans deserve every animal attack that has ever happened in the history of this planet.
fixed it for ya. Cats claws are nasty. “Cat-scratch fever” ain’t just a Ted Nugent song.
I’ve always been a “scrotum is half full” kind of person. You have to look at the bright side. The horse did spit the testicle out.
The horse was trying to geld the owner in an attempt to make him calmer and better-behaved. The horse knew his meanness was really hormonally driven.
I recall a Lakota story:
The horses and the humans were being harassed and attacked by the wolves. The humans said to the horses, “If you let us ride you we can defeat the wolves and drive them away”, the horses replied, “We’re not sure about this, doesn’t look good in the long run”, and the humans replied, “It’s OK, we’ll just do it this one time.”
Humans sometimes lie.
Reminds me of a story on NPR about a man who spent one night too many at a brothel, he was sedated by his wife who then cut off the offending member and attached it to a helium balloon, to prevent reattachment.
And how long did it take you to straighten up enough to type this post?
In the words of Peter Griffin: “Horses are terrible people.”
KI: I thought it was a parable by Leoonardo Da Vinchi, but apparently not:
From the same link (not very relavent)
On the first day of creation, God created the Horse
On the second day, God created Man to serve the Horse
On the third day, God created all the animals of the earth to spook the Horse when Man was upon his back.
On the fourth day, God created an honest day’s work so that man could labor to pay for the keeping of the Horse
On the fifth day, God created the grasses in the field so that Horse could eat and man could toil and cleanup after the Horse.
On the sixth day, God created veterinary science to keep the Horse healthy and Man broke.
On the seventh day, God rested and said “This is good. This will teach Man humility, it will tire him out and keep him striving ever forward to meet the needs of the Horse.”
dNorrisM@89
Well, ya know those oral traditions tend to change a bit from storyteller to storyteller. I like your version, especially the ending.
First they eat an old ladies face off, then they bludgeon people with rocks and coconuts, now they are attacking our very ability to reproduce!
THIS is vengeance for our failed policy on polar bears and global warming.
When will we learn??
I miss having a cat. I want one, but for the life of me can’t figure out why Matt is so vehemently against this. . .
I don’t own my cat. He just lives here. And makes demands.
Every few minutes.
He comes and goes as he pleases, apart from the fact that he can’t always manage to open the door himself to let himself in and out, so at those times (every few minutes) he is forced to come up behind me in my chair and tap me impatiently, or climb in my bed and wake me up.
He also does this when he’s decided that I need to get him a different food item than what he already has. Every few minutes.
Despite the fact that I am clearly a pretty lousy servant that he has to keep after constantly, he must be satisfied with the arrangement because he’s stayed here instead of moving in with one of the neighbors.
Anne:
Neither did Spock.
Speaking of OUCH!!!!! Here’s one for the ladies:
http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Woman-Severely-Injured-in-Sex-ToyPower-Tool-Encounter.html
Alan Kellogg and Jafafa Hots:
It’s true, when a cat wants to hurt you… he will. My cat is normally a very sweet and cuddly cat. Then one day, I was holding him and showing him to my grandma (when I was visiting my family) and she had her dog with her. My cat went crazy, hissing and spitting… totally freaking out. Since I was holding him, he clawed the CRAP out of the top of my head (thank Zeus I had the presence of mind to shield my face, or I’d have some nasty scars). I still had scabs 6 months later, luckily they weren’t visible since they were all under my hair. Some of the puncture wounds from his nails went really deep! Turns out my cat does not like dogs. When he’s playing I get scratches, but they barely break the skin… so there is a BIG difference between playing and fighting.
While individual equine personalities do vary, this kind of over-the-top, nasty behavior is the result of poor training and possibly abuse. Horses and donkeys in third world countries are typically treated very poorly.
So as far as I’m concerned, the guy deserved it.
Hurray for the horse.
I have just adopted two feral kittens, one of which is socializing nicely. BTW, being a male and a female, they are named Darwin and Huxlie. I am constantly bemused by the ferocity of their play; they chase each other like a herd of elephants throughout the house, and sometimes across the bed (and at least once, judging from the scream from the husbeast, landing a direct hit on the family jewels). I have only been attacked once, by the non-socialized male, when I put the grab on him to clip his claws – I haven’t been able to get near him since. Huxlie has figured out that I am the source of food and pleasure (i.e. staff), and will put up with most anything, including clipping. They are still a source of delight, and it makes me think Ann Hedonia (scroll up) must be a particularly joyless critter, not something I would want in MY house.
Ouchie-woo-eee!
I used to have a horse that always tried to bite. I didn’t know proper horse-training methods, so I’d just whack him upside the head. We got along fine, but we kept an eye on each other, and I tended to walk sideways.
If you want to send the poor man a card, the Indonesian for “done by a horse” is “Di ancuk jaran”, and “one testicle” is “biji satu”. I think. I had to look that up, as such phrases were seldom used while taking tea with the mission ladies.
mmmm, technically, no, since he has one nut left. To qualify for the Darwin Award, you have to remove yourself from the gene pool in a stupid way, ie to be unable to reproduce (either dead or sterile).
However, I’d give him an honorary Darwin Award for trying.
Maybe it’s just me, but something seems to be missing from this story. Horses don’t normally reach down that far to bite unless that’s the highest point they can reach (such as if they were biting at a dog), as it would be awkward and make their backs more vulnerable. I imagine if he were standing in the cart, maybe the guy’s berries and twig would be at about the right height for plucking, but not on the ground.
Nahhh, I left mine at Selective Service when I picked up my Draft Card 30 years ago.
———————————————
The Jesus, Food, Zombie, Grilled Cheese Sandwich Connection
Two options…
The horse went for thenuts!
The horse went
nutsGalt!On a more sober note, how soon before the crazies blame this on witches and someone gets hurt?
Having seen how animals are treated in that part of the world, I’m only sorry the horse didn’t go two for two.
So….he was bitten in the Molluccas
I have looked in the eyes of some mistreated horses and cows. Not a pretty sight.
I concur that this raises interesting questions of the gender quota of the readers of this site, maybe we should have a **Poll** of our own!?
Wayne Robinson, @63:
The West Australian website headlines the story:
“Horse bites off Indon man’s testicle”
http://www.thewest.com.au/aapstory.aspx?StoryName=557650
Better check and see if that sub-editor still has a job.
It wasn’t luck that saved the guys testicle… It was JESUS!!!
Would that make it a horse of a different choler?
Proof of intelligent design. Clearly only a divine intelligence would create horses to spit out a guy’s testicle after biting it off.
You know – i would LOVE it if the plant and animal kingdom rose up and wiped our sorry asses off the face of the earth – my motto as always is “BRING ON THE BIRD FLU!”
Lee Picton @ 98: … it makes me think Ann Hedonia (scroll up) must be a particularly joyless critter…
[shrug] Truth in advertising.
FTR, I winced pretty good at that, so that’s not limited to the testicularly-burdened* part of the Ilk.
(*Bring it, Louis.)
Chris Davis, you might want to count again. The answer is “18.” Except for the polydactyls, of course.
And please, no more cat anecdotes! I love my cat too, but nothing is more boring.
Jafafa Hots: You sound like the perfect cat roommate. I have one that I took on from Allen Street (I’m assuming you know where that is, based on your name). He was abandoned, alone, declawed, and starving. A friend at Nietzsche’s asked me to adopt him. Still, he’s only gotten that look in his eye twice since he’s lived with me (3 years so far). I can only assume it came from some perceived threat, and while he has some strong jaws, he did no permanent damage. All I know is that I probably get a lot more out of our relationship than he does, although he seems pretty darned content most of the time.
@Anne:
The easy solution: don’t have a pet. Better for you, and definitely better for said animal.
No, he was torn a Sunda.
This is what happens when you don’t discipline a horse. A horse doesn’t need love and affection, it needs to be taught who’s boss. Horses bite – they’re horrible animals. Even when broken in, if the horse thinks it can get away with something it will do all sorts of horrible stuff like try to throw the rider, bite people it doesn’t recognize as boss, and my own favorite is trying to brush a rider off on a low branch. If a horse continues to misbehave when disciplinary action is taken then the best thing to do is send the horse to the pet food factory and the glue factory. Unfortunately all those TV shows and movies give people a really weird and outright wrong impression of what horses are like.
Don’t worry, fellas; I’ve been riding for 34+ years, and I know a FEW women who’ve been chomped on the boob by one horse or another. (Not me; they always go for my fingers!) Now THAT leaves interesting marks.
ANY horse will bite; ANY horse will spook; ANY horse will kick. Memorizing this mantra can keep you (or anybody) safe around my favorite animals. :>
OT, we also adopted a pair of kittens over a year ago. One is now a cuddler; the other is still the feral cat who lives in our house and lets me pet him for five minutes every third day or so, otherwise hides under chairs. Claw clipping?? That ended VERY badly the last time we tried it, over six months ago. He actually swiped at Tom’s EYES. 0.0;;;
Disciplining your pet.
#39
Deadly snake bites penis
You gonna die Kemosabe
…and that’s why we get issued with two.
Anybody else think of Monstrous Regiment? The scene where a horse bites ‘Oliver’ Perks right in the socks. (Yes, I’m heartless–I laughed.)
MadScientist #118: Hmmph. Show me a horse who’s been “taught who’s boss” and I’ll show you a horse who likely hates his owner and likely isn’t much fond of anyone else either until they get to know anyone who gives them 1-1 respect.
“Discipline” my ass.
BULL. SHIT.
Amongst too many self-described ‘horse lovers’ that word is a common euphemism for intimidation and coercion and often paraded out – especially after an “incident” – as an excuse for outright brutality and abuse.
I’ve seen it often enough to know. One old-timer acquaintance I knew who had his two small fingers of his left hand bitten off at their second joints when he was a young man related to me how he had whipped the shit out of the horse responsible about a month before the mare took his fingers off. Yet he still used the word “discipline” as if whipping was a natural part of training. With a chuckle he said, “that animal remembered the whooping”.
Funny, isn’t it? Elephants are oddly associated with a legendary capacity for memory. Is it so strange to consider the possibility that horses don’t forget either?
Horses aren’t stupid, and their “unpredictability” is basically directly proportional to the stupidity of whoever goes near one without offering a comparable level of alertness that the horse exhibits. Horses are beings who have their own sense of dignity and however ‘domesticated’ we pretend they may be to our purposes, they’ve got some innate behavioral conditions that have to be met, whether we like it or not. We harness them, make them do things against their natural inclination, and expect a smooth ride or performance out of them. If this was done with people, we would call it “slavery” and protest loudly about how horrible it is.
We forget that horses are much bigger than we are (especially as soon as we consider them “tamed”), but horses know very well they are bigger than we are and can seriously mame or kill us anytime they DECIDE they’ve had enough.
There really is such a thing as ‘horse-sense’: they can be very discriminating in their own intuitive way, based on their previous experience on encountering certain types of people (according to how horses would compartmentalize “types” of people). Look at a horse’s eyes the next time you approach one you haven’t yet been introduced to. They look very closely right at you, into your eyes and face, and they are sizing you up.
They are GOOD at it. It’s in their behavioral repertoir to be automatically suspicious of any creature that isn’t a horse that comes nearby. They’re automatically ‘heads up’ about the approach of any stranger or novel situation. Their genetic heritage requires that heightened level of watchfulness (a level which in a human would be called “paranoia”). One should expect this from herbivores who have evolved to run fast and run in herds for safety against predators. Unfortunately many “horse lovers” don’t.
Horses recognize a potential threat accurately only because they don’t much trust anything that isn’t another horse, and even then they have to get acquainted with a strange horse before the alarm dies down.
Because of that constant alertness they recognize insincerity in humans better and faster than most people I know can. They are NOT as likely to lash out on perfect strangers unless they don’t like the type they’ve previously experienced. A horse who sees a mannerism or a face that resembles somebody who “discplined” him or her will understandably get upset. But they’re not devious about anything: if a person they don’t like the looks of approaches them, they almost invariably let you know before they get too close.
I lay 10 to 1 odds that the fellow with the missing testacle abused the horse and had it coming. It wasn’t because the horse got fed up with hauling sand-filled carts. It was almost certainly due to being coerced into doing so by an asshole who “disciplined” that horse. An idiot who never figured out that he could have gotten a much more agreeable horse if only he had been treated as a full partner to the task.
Heck, this basic principle has been barely observed between human employers and employees. Humans who think with whips and spurs have been a constant menace to civility as well as productivity for centuries. After a mere few tens of thousands of years of ‘civilization’ augmented by the domestication of animals, beastmastership is so common that almost nobody notices how contrary it is to an efficient symbiosis.
This circumstance was not lost on those who first and most forcefully herded people towards a common purpose, and the practice of tending sheep became a convenient analogy for coercing the herd to follow particular avenues of belief…
The good meaning of the word “discipline” is that which is applied to a being’s own devices, desires, a regimen one imposes on one’s own self. It becomes a lousy and dispicable word as soon as it is used to mean enforced domination. The appropriate word for that would be “slavery”. We need bosses – leaders and statesmen too – who guide and share the burden, not bosses who act like superior beast-masters that crack whips.
NO KINGS.
Around here we call them prairie oysters.
That gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, “busted a nut”.