It darts out of the chute and bucks its way around the ring, yelping out of control. It looks shaggy, desperate and annoyed. Then it charges right at all of us cowering behind the wooden barrier at the edge of the ring, kicking up dust and ramming those two nubby horns into the chipped-up wood.
No. Way. No way. I am not going out there and taunting this huffy 136kg animal, not with this fake wooden sword and swath of red flannel cloth.
But the ring's steel doors are closed. The stone walls are too high to jump over. If only I could reason with it -- I won't hurt you if you won't hurt me, promise -- then maybe I'd get to fly home without a hoof print between the eyes.
Then I am out there, alone with the cape. She is staring right at me -- true, this is a young female, just a training animal, not a real bull. Still, she does not look pleased.
"Dude, she's so good right now -- walk right at her closer." The voice is that of Coleman Cooney, my bullfighting mentor. "Closer," he insists. "Now toque!"
A toque is a shake of a matador's cape, and Cooney is the owner and founder of the California Academy of Tauromaquia, one of the very few bullfighting schools in the US. When his students have advanced past learning a few basic moves, or passes, he takes them to this working ranch in Valle de las Palmas, Baja California, about 40km south of the border town of Tecate, to practice on real animals.
At my level of expertise, the aim is not to kill or harm anything, but to try out moves and get some idea what matadors are up against when they dance around in that bullring.
School starts in the gravel driveway of Cooney's ranch in Alpine, California, a mountain village about 40km east of San Diego. Last year some 175 students signed up to learn the tricky and controversial art of toreo. Cooney, 48, now a screen-writer, lived the expatriate life in Spain for nearly a decade, picking grapes in vineyards and becoming an aficionado practico (or serious bullfighting fan) by learning a matador's cape maneuvers on bull ranches. Back in the US, he founded his school nine years ago.
While bullfighting is illegal in the US (except for nonlethal "bloodless" events in some states), and California also bars promoting or advertising bullfights, it is not illegal to teach the moves and traditions. Cooney stages the live-animal component of his class work in Mexico. Advanced students can even pay extra for the opportunity to kill a bull there.
Over the years, humane societies have launched campaigns to shut him down. Animal rights groups have sent spies with video cameras. Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the US, said Cooney's school is a "stepping stone" to animal cruelty. "This is not an activity that any school should promote or provide training for," Pacelle said. "We want them to stop engaging in this nonsense."
Cooney contends that the opposition has only made the experience more attractive to thrill seekers. "I think our students are tired of all the fingers wagging in their faces," he told me a few days before I arrived at his place for a weekend class in January. "The idea of something so contrarian as bullfighting becomes appealing."
Students cannot, of course, begin by challenging one of the gigantic bulls that carry more than 454kg of rippled muscle and charge at matadors in the corrida with a full rack of razor-sharp horns. The animal I faced was a vaquilla, a young female genetically predisposed to aggressiveness from the stock used by breeders to produce brave and lucrative fighting bulls. Practice runs like mine help determine which cows have the most promise for producing aggressive sons.
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