Testicular Fortitude

Last night, Hubby and I attended a dinner at the home of a now retired colleague of his. Dinner was a lovely mélange of nyama choma, or as we call it in Canada, lots of meat! Conversation around the dinner table included a debate about the alleged tastiness of ugali and where people with husbands who loved them are going for the long Easter weekend. (In case it isn’t clear, I will be staying in town.)

As lovely as dinner was, it was the post-dinner conversation that will live forever in people’s memories of the evening. And no, I’m not talking about the Richard Leakey and white men in African politics discussion. The topic that the room full of veterinarians wanted to discuss more than anything was the finer points of castration.

Yes, you read that correctly: castration. They talked about the old-fashioned cut and run method used on pigs. We then turned to another popular (if not for poor Porky and his friends) method of cutting “it” off and then turning “it” over and over and over until the rest of it falls off. But I think that Hubby’s favourite was the new “humane” method of castration: by injecting a form of anesthesia directly into the testicle.

(I will now pause so that all men reading this blog can cringe and hold their “boys” in sympathy.)

I kid thee not; this conversation went on for at least 30 minutes before someone noticed the look of extreme discomfort on Hubby’s face. It was at that point that our kind host turned the discussion from pig castration to – cow castration. At least it didn’t involve any needles being inserted into tender boy parts.