Latex gloves that go up to the armpit are a bad sign
“Professor Parks, my sperm aren’t moving!” Sara looked up from her microscope with anxiety.
“That’s because the light is shining on them.” Sara scrunched her forehead. I tried to make sense of this. Why would sperm have photoreceptors?
“But how…?”
“It was a joke, Sara!” The whole class laughed at poor Sara. I looked around nervously and joined in, hoping nobody caught that I fell for it too.
I focused my scope, and I was shocked by the diversity of swimmers. I had expected them to look like an army of identical tadpoles marching forward, but some sperm had two tails, some kept swimming in circles, and some looked like their heads had been squashed between two clamps. These were apocalyptic zombie sperm, trudging along despite their decaying bodies. I’m glad I only had a small sample: it was terrifying to think there were more than a billion of them in every milliliter of semen.
Even more terrifying than the samples themselves was the “harvest” we completed in the previous class. Professor Parks stood in a teaching barn in front of two massive bulls.
“You might wonder why we are using another bull to “tease“ our subject, the bull we wish to collect a sample from. We don’t want to use a cow because that would risk an unintended pregnancy. Bulls don’t have specific preferences. We could actually use any sort of inverted “U” shape and this guy would get excited.” Professor Parks became somber, “and that is why you should never bend over to tie your shoelaces in a bullpen.”
He explained the procedure. One student would pull on the neck tether of the “subject” to guide it on top of the “teaser bull.” The student would wait a second for the bull to become erect, then it would be pulled off without satisfaction. This would be repeated twice more in order to “build up the quality and quantity of the semen.” When he became erect for the third time another student would quickly apply the “AV” or artificial vagina to his phallus. The AV needed to be removed immediately following ejaculation.
My palms began to sweat as I considered the many opportunities to be kicked by a frustrated, horny bull.
Prof. Parks looked down at his clipboard. “Sara Adams, you will be guiding the subject with the tether. “Lauren Allen, you will be collecting first.”
Damn it! Why did my name have to be so early in the alphabet! I took the AV from Parks. It was like a two foot section of hose with a cone for collection at one end. It felt warm from the hot water inside of it. “Different species have specific preferences for temperature and pressure,” I remembered Prof. Parks saying. I bet they do.
I clutched the AV nervously. Sara looked like she might throw up, but she gamely guided the subject bull atop the teaser bull, and I saw a bull penis for the first time. Unlike the human male’s vascular penis, the fibroelastic penis of a bull lurks in the body cavity until arousal when it bursts forth like a huge alien carrot. Sara pulled the subject off, then on, then off, then on… it was my time.
I’m just juicing a carrot I told myself as I shoved on the AV.
“Use a 45 degree angle Lauren!” The bull thrusted. I collected my sample and removed the AV. The whole thing took less than 3 seconds. You almost have to admire the bull’s efficiency.
With the semen collected and analyzed for viability it was time for the third process of this sequence: the artificial insemination, aka, knocking up a cow. Why do farmers go through all of this trouble? Or as my Whole Foods friends might ask, “why don’t they just let the cattle enjoy themselves naturally?”
“There are many reasons why artificial insemination is superior to coitus for large scale production.” Prof Parks said somewhat defensively. He stood now in a different section of the teaching barn, with stall after stall filled with cows chewing hay, blissfully unaware of their soon-to-be-pregnancies. “Artificial insemination limits the spread of disease. Because semen can easily be preserved and shipped, it promotes genetic diversity by allowing studs to be bred with cows in other states or even other countries.
But most importantly, we are breeding for dairy farms, so we want to have female calves. It is easy to centrifuge and separate the “x” from the “y” containing sperm so that you can cause all calves to be females, which are much more useful on a dairy farm. In fact, bulls are huge and often poorly behaved, so AI allows many farmers to avoid keeping such a high-cost, dangerous animal on the farm at all.”
He looked at the on the wooden barn wall. “Alright, that’s enough chatting.” He pulled on a huge latex glove and pulled it up all the way up to his armpit. “Can someone bring me over the bucket of lube?”
It was in fact, a huge plastic bucket marked “lube.” I would have taken a picture if I wasn’t so terrified. And it turns out I had reason to be. “Hey, Lauren Allen? You did such a good job doing the bull collection first, would you mind being my demonstrator here?”
I took a deep breath and thought about my GPA. “I don't mind,” I squeaked.
I pulled on the glove up to my armpit and covered it with lube.
“Here is the AI gun filled with semen.” It looked like a huge syringe.
“Clean off the vulva with the rag, and insert the syringe to the vagina as far as you can.” I did as he asked, and the gun got stuck halfway in. The cow continued to chew her cud as if nothing had happened.
“Now class, what part is the gun getting stuck on? Stewart?”
Stewart’s eyes were huge behind his glasses. “The cervix, it is interdigitating.” Stewart intoned robotically.
“Very good! Yes, the cervix is like a maze so we will have to guide the gun through it so we can deposit the semen into the uterus. Now the cow’s rectum is directly on top of her vagina. Lauren will put her arm in the rectum, then reach down to manipulate the cervix back and forth so that she can guide the AI gun through. Go ahead, Lauren!”
I’m sorry Bessy, I thought. I reached my arm in. It was hot and manurey in there. “Now feel along the bottom for a hard lump.” I found it. “And move it back and forth while feeding the AI gun through.”
It’s just like putting a key in a lock, I told myself.
“It’s through? Now push in the plunger to deposit the semen. Great job!” He clapped and the whole class joined in. I felt proud for about a second until the the rectal muscles clenched around my whole arm. “Uh, Prof Parks? I can’t get my arm out.”
“Just wait a minute. She’ll relax.”
I couldn’t feel my fingers. God, what if she never released, and my arm dies in here? I felt the eyes of my classmates on me, who didn’t dare laugh because they were frightened of the same fate.
The muscles loosened suddenly and I whipped my arm out. But just before freedom, Bessy squeezed again. I managed to wiggle my fingers out but the glove was stuck in there. We all watched in horror as the glove was pulled up inch by inch into the anus, seemingly being chewed up.
“Don’t worry, that’s normal. It will come back out eventually. Who’s next?”
And that was the day I decided I no longer wanted to be a veterinarian.