Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast

60 Minutes with 3 Bulls

Just before I cross the street, on the start of my walk from Parking Lot S101 to my building, I can see them there. They are gathered in the grass, flanked by trees. One, the one I have come to call the Leader, raises his head. Every day he looks out for me. Every day he is there to be sure that I am there, returning to campus for another day of work.

I move closer. Now I am across Carter Avenue. The Leader whispers "Ah, it's you" and goes back to looking out for other students, professors, and assorted campusfolk.

But today I do not keep walking. Today I stop for a while to visit with the 3 Bulls.

This one, I call him Number Two, looks over to the one I call Sleepy. I do not think he approves of Sleepy, perhaps because Sleepy is always...sleeping. Well, except for that time he was about two feet from his current position, and tipped over on his back. When these Bulls were first installed, they would every once in a while be in new positions. The campus paper at these times claimed the Bulls were the victims of student pranksters.

The possibility that they are, actually, alive never occurred to most people.

But here is proof that they are alive. See how the ground has been disturbed by Sleepy's breath?

One thing that is difficult to appreciate by mere pictures is how very appealingly tactile the Bulls are. Their deep night skin invites me to touch them. The crosshatches in their pelt tingle my fingertips as I play across them like instrument strings.

They gather, retain, exaggerate their surrounding weather. In the summertime, on our walk to Lot S101 from the U's day camp, my kids used to love to climb all 3. I could quell any disappoint ("Oh, Mommy, can't we stay at camp five minutes longer"; "But why can't we go to McDonalds for dinner"; "You said we could have a play date with ______--You said") by promising my daughters a visit with the Bulls. But some days, some too-rare nice and warm and sun-drenched Minnesota days, the Bulls were too hot to be climbed on or touched at all.

The 3 Bulls live across the street from the Dairy Building--which, as I recently found out, is actually called Haecker Hall. Haecker, like my building, McNeal, is located on the St. Paul campus of the Twin Cities (main) campus of the University of Minnesota. Our St Paul campus is kind of like the poor country cousin to the other two TC sites, East Bank and West Bank. This, even though these two Minneapolis campuses are only a 10-15 minute shuttle ride away from St. Paul's.

Once when I was riding the shuttle bus from the East Bank I overheard this conversation:

Student 1: "So, man, you gettin' off at the Gopher [parking] lots?"

Student 2: "No, man..." Softly, "I'm going over to the St. Paul campus."

Student 1: "St. Paul!" Laughs, "Man, I've been here four years, I don't think I've ever had a class Over There."

Student 2: "Yeah, man, it sucks big time...it's all, like, cows and horses and agriculture and shit. I don't even know why they put the ______ Department over there."

Student 1, getting off the shuttle: "A'ight, man, I'll see you tomorrow."

Student 2: (slouches in his seat as the shuttle pulls off and begins down the transitway to the St. Paul campus)

But I love the St. Paul campus. And I love the Dairy Building/Haecker Hall--even though I have never had a class or meeting in there. The very best thing about the Dairy Building/Haecker Hall is the bathrooms. Here, on the tiles, across from the big Bulls, are still more bulls--along with horses and pigs and all manner of other animals representative of "agriculture and sh**."

I've now spent an entire hour with the 3 Bulls. This, because of an exercise inspired by "Stretching" Exercises for Qualitative Researchers. It is exercise 4.2: "The Camera as an Extension of the Eye; The Eye as an Extension of the Soul" on page 92. I am not sure I have now succeeded in "finding out what kind of qualitative researcher [I] might become." I did see a familiar setting in a new light.

Tomorrow I'll go back to just passing my Bulls. The Leader will look up and acknowledge--and reinforce--my continuing presence on campus. Maybe if I get to campus early enough, I'll arrive to see Number Two look past Sleepy to the grassy quad beyond, where some folks from the Raptor Center might be helping an injured boreal owl take flight again.

There are not many places you can be protected by a bull's watchful gaze while owls and eagles fly overhead. In fact, the only place I know of is on the St. Paul campus.

***News story about the installation of the Bulls here.***

Posted by perry032 at September 28, 2005 11:45 AM | TrackBack
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