Cowgirl poker

Chetta Lafitte, 23, of Corning, is California’s first female cowboy poker champ, which makes her about the toughest chick around. As if brawling with Mexican fighting bulls at last September’s national bullriding championships wasn’t enough, Lafitte is also a wildland firefighter, horse breaker and professional barrel racer. Don’t get on her bad side.

How do you practice for cowboy poker?

You don’t [laughs]. Just kidding, no. It’s just a lot of self-control.

Why would you do something like that? It sounds insane.

This was just something that I’d watched and I’d seen, and I kind of thought it would be neat. What they do is, they set up a table in the middle of an arena, and three to six guys sit around the table, and then they turn a bull loose out of the chute. The last man standing is the one who wins, and I just happened to be the last woman standing in this case.

Have you ever been gored by a bull?

I got hit and flung around that night.

What happened?

They flung the gates open, and the bull came out. … He came in at the table and lifted the table up—flung the table up, and it came down on top of me. Well, I flung the table off and I was still sitting there. He spun around and got between me and the fence—I had just gotten up. He was breathing down my back, and I jumped up and threw the chair at him. He came after me and he got me. He hit me and flung me up in the air, and then I went back down on the ground, and when I did he got on top of me, and he was goring the crap out of me. He stepped on me a couple of times. My helmet popped off about halfway through ‘cause he stepped on my head, and I pulled my helmet back down on my ears. After that, the bullfighters … they were there to help me, and they were really good.

What did you win?

They presented me with a knife. I didn’t know it was a knife—I thought it was money. I said, ‘What’s a woman going to do with a knife?" My old barrel racing partner looked at me and said, "baling twine."