Frank Lucas scrambled to close the gate of his stock trailer as the bull he'd herded inside only moments before made a frantic U-turn and barreled back toward the three-foot-wide alleyway it came from.
As soon as the longtime Oklahoma congressman and former House Ag Committee chairman saw the 1,000-pound beast charging towards him, he knew there was nowhere to run.
"There are moments when you see certain parts of your life flash before your eyes," Lucas told Agri-Pulse as he recalled the incident. "That's really true."
Lucas, a Republican, hasn't fully recovered from hip and pelvis injuries he sustained during a run-in with the bull on his ranch last month, but he's returning to Capitol Hill this week as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., struggles to pass a stopgap spending bill that is needed to keep the government open when the new fiscal year starts on Sunday.
The animal wasn’t even his.
A stray bull appeared in Lucas’s pasture one day in late July with no brand, ear tags, ear notches or any other distinguishing marks. His wife, Lynda, called all the neighbors in a five-mile radius to see if they knew the owner, but none did, Lucas said.
So he followed the procedure for dealing with stray livestock laid out in Oklahoma law. He alerted the county sheriff, who placed an ad in the local newspaper looking for the animal’s owner.
Nobody claimed the bull after the sheriff placed the ads and, on Aug. 4, Lucas prepared for the next stage of the process: hauling the animal to the sale barn where it could be sold. State law stipulates that unclaimed animals be sold by the sheriff. The profits, if not claimed by the original owner within a year, go into the county general fund.
But during Lucas’s attempt to load the bull into his trailer, things went sour. The animal, which he described as “excitable and a little crazy,” rammed Lucas with its front shoulder as it tried to escape.
“I don’t believe he intended to get me,” Lucas said. “He just wanted to get away.”
The force of the collision hit Lucas’s left side so hard that he spun until he was “cross-legged.” As the animal pushed through, it placed enough force on Lucas’s femur, hip socket and pelvis to break them “in numerous places.”
He fell to the ground. As he lay facedown in the dirt with his cell phone and hat scattered around him, Lucas remembers thinking that the encounter may not have been as bad as he initially believed it to be.
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“In that first three seconds, I realize I’ve not been kicked, I’ve not been stepped on. I put my hand down to the side — I don’t have a compound fracture,” he said. “Maybe the Lord really does take care of fools.”
But then he tried to get up. He recognized immediately that his right leg wasn’t moving properly.
Lucas was able to get into a car with Lynda’s help, and she drove him to an emergency room about 17 miles away. He was later sent by helicopter to a hospital in Oklahoma City where surgeons reconnected his hip socket and pelvis with “the most amazing, long screws.”
Lucas flew back to Washington Tuesday evening with plans to traverse the Capitol complex using a wheelchair or crutches. Doctors expect him to be able to walk without assistance in about six weeks.
Lucas said the incident reflects the ever-present dangers of the agriculture industry, but admitted he was fortunate. The damage would have been worse if the bull had put its head down “like a football player” and ran straight towards him, rather than merely attempting to push past him, he said.
“I’m a lucky dude,” Lucas said.
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