The Duel

You ever had that moment when something scares you that shouldn’t, but just for a second it does.  Once that moment has passed, you get a little mad that it happened.  You think to yourself, how stupid was that!  I cannot believe I felt that way.  It is normally this way for snakes for me, there’s a couple stories about that, but today is another story.  A story that for just a second, I was that little four year old boy again.

 

We have some friends that their house flooded during all of the rain in the Houston area and I was able to go over and help them a couple times to clean up, remove drywall and etc.  But since they cannot stay in their house, my buddy asked me to put his chickens up at night.  It just chickens right, no problem.  Until last night…

 

I approached the coop with no thought of the mortal danger I might be in.  After all, it’s just chickens.  As I walked up the rooster, I call him Gallo de Diablo now, eased out the gate.  No problem, I just eased around him and like a good cowboy…I started herding him back to the gate.  That’s when things went terribly wrong.  Diablo puffed up his chest and threw back his arms and charged me.  Now, I’ll be honest…He’s a big chicken (as in tall), but he is still just a chicken.  But for a four or five seconds I turned into that four year old boy that had to gather eggs from our coop at home and fight, what I considered at the time, a giant rooster.  My heart rate was up and my skin was covered with goose bumps (although I suppose these could be considered chicken bumps, goose bumps are for geese and that’s another story involving ropes and geese).  I yelled at the rooster (because yelling is effective when fighting off a tyrannosaurus foghornus leghornus) and took a kick at him.  He backed off a little but was still defending his coop with all the grit he could muster.  At that point, we just stared at each other, like we were in some spaghetti western; standing in the dusty street waiting for the other rooster to make his move.  I swear I could hear the theme music from all of the gunfights in those movies.

 

At this point I started talking to him.  I know, I know….but I think he understood me.

 

Me:   “I can’t believe you just did that, what’s your deal?  Do you really want to go down this road?  Do you want a piece of me?”  (I might have yelled that last line, not sure)

Gallo De Diablo:  “Baawwkkk….” (I translated this as “oh, I want a piece of you alright”)

Me:  “So, that’s how it’s gonna be huh?”

Gallo De Diablo:  “Baawwkkk….bawk” (puffs up chest again) (I translated this as “that’s how it gonna be”)

Me:  “bring it” (again, might have yelled this)

 

At this point Diablo runs at me again.  And for some reason, I felt the need to yell again as I kicked at him (unleashing my ninja skills).  I missed, he missed and we both backed off again.  Again we stared at each other (I heard that music again and thought I saw a tumbleweed blow by) wondering who was going to make the first move.  We slowly started circling each other; I swear I caught myself flexing my hands at my hips like there were pistols there. 

Me:  “all right bud, if this is how it’s gonna be.  One of us might have to die”

Diablo:  “baawwkk, bawwkk….bawkok” (I translated this as “it’s going to be you, cowboy!”)

Me:  “talking crap don’t get you nowhere, back off or die…your choice”

 

As we circled I suddenly realized that I was now between Diablo and the coop, and he was about twenty feet away.  It was here that my sanity returned.  I had a thought that I would unlatch the gate (so I could quickly close it) and just let him go in on his own.  As I bent down to unlatch the gate prop, out of the corner of my eye…I see him.  He is coming at me in full charge mode; chest puffed, leaning forward at a dead run.  I quickly stood up; he stopped and started pecking at the ground like he was just in a hurry to reach that spot. 

Me:  “kind of a coward, aren’t you?”

Diablo:  “Baawk, baawak” (which I translated as, “nothing to see here, resume what you were doing”)

Me:  “I know what you were trying to do, you back jumping turd”

 

I stared at him for a moment, wondering how he would taste with some dumplings.  But he’s not mine, so I bent down again.  There he comes again, same as before.  This time I was ready.  Like some grand master cowboy ninja, I quickly stood up and kicked out a roundhouse kick that would have had made Chuck Norris proud.  There was an explosion of feathers, as I connected with Diablo’s head.  He flew through the air for a couple of feet and just sorta flopped around a little when he hit the ground.  For just a second I gleefully thought I had killed him.  That didn’t last long, because as I said…he wasn’t mine. 

 

Then like some scene from a horror movie where you think the monster is dead and it gets back up out of the ooze, Gallo De Diablo rose up from the ground.  I flashed back to that little four year old boy for a second, and had a sinking pit in my stomach.  But, it seems he’d had enough.  He headed further out into the back yard.  But now I have another problem, he’s outside the coop and he needs to be inside the coop.  So I walked away from the coop hoping that he would head back that way.  No chance, it seems he does not want anything more to do with this cowboy ninja.  So I did what any good cowboy would do, I thought about finding a rope to catch him with.  But alas, the flood had removed any sort of rope or string that might have been available.  So I eased around him and used my hat, which he was afraid of for some reason, and herded him toward the coop.  He squawked at me the whole time, but he headed for the coop at a high lope.  Once he got inside, he really made some noise.  The whole time he was carrying on, the hens were making noise too.

Hens:  “bawk, bawk, bawk” (I think this means “Oh Diablo, you’re our hero.  You protected us from that awful cowboy.  Are you hurt? Do we need to nurse you back to health?”)

Diablo:  “bawk, baaawwkkk, baawwkok.”  (This I translated as “I only came in here because this is where the ladies are and I wanted to be with them.  You had nothing to do with it and you just wait till tomorrow, cowboy!  No ladies, I aint hurt, that cowboy couldn’t hurt me if he wanted to”)

Me:  “Looking forward to it, can’t wait to kick you in the head again”

 

I’m sure I will be closing the coop again tomorrow, hoping I leave that four year old boy in my past.  Think I’ll take a rope.

The Flaming Mask of Peppermint

My wife uses oils, I have used oils…not a lot, but I’ve used them.  I have mostly made fun of people who use oils.  Rest assured I believe some of them work.  I just like to pick at the folks who are full on voodoo believers.  It’s one of my small pleasures in life.  Sometimes this comes back to bite me on the behind.
 

A couple of days ago, I got to bed with a pounding headache.  My normal procedure is to get up , get a couple aspirin, slime up a little in my mouth, swaller’ em and go back to bed.  But that night my Bride was putting some oils on her knees.  I don’t recall what it was she was using, but I mentioned that I had a headache.  She said, “No problem, do you want me to put some peppermint on your temples?”  I initially thought she said something else, but I won’t go into that.  I thought to myself I don’t want to get out of bed, so “yeah, put some on me”.

She put a little dab on her finger and rubbed it on the sides of my head.  I couldn’t tell she’d put any on me.  I couldn’t yet smell it and must have had the look on my face that said that, because my Bride asked if I wanted more.  Being from the school of “if one nail is good, 10 is better”, I told her to slather some more on there.  I could immediately tell I now had some on me, because I could smell it.  It kinda made my eyes water a little.  Ok truth be told…my sinus’ cleared out and my eyes started watering like Niagara Falls.  But I am a tough guy, so I said thanks and lay back down.

I lay there with liquid running out of my eyes, streaming down either side of my head like the Columbia River in the spring time.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind my eyes watering.  What bothered me was that somehow that peppermint had caught on fire.  I now had flaming streams of liquid fire on either side of my head.  I was pretty confident that somehow my Bride had snuck up on me with a match and lit me up in some kind of morbid game of “let’s see what this’ll do”.  I could even have dealt with this, if it weren’t for the fact that my eyes were also on fire.  It was a little like having welder burnt eyes.  If you never had welder burnt eyes, and want to experience it without the benefit of the welder arc, I highly recommend the peppermint oils.  It will give you that just right burned out eyeballs feeling you’ve been looking for.

The flaming liquid trails on either side of my head or the burned out fiery holes that once had been my eyes would have been tough to deal with by themselves, but together…oh, together…together they were more fun than being whipped with a rattlesnake.  I swear at one point I thought I smelled steak, but I knew that couldn’t be right.  I figured it must have been the meat on the sides of my head cookin’.  All I could hear was this weird screaming sound, I thought it might have been my Bride screaming in horror…but then I realized it was me.

I noticed through the pain glazed fire that was now my eyesight that my Bride, during all of this, was double over shaking.  I thought she might have been crying, seeing all of the pain that I was in.  But to my horror, I realized she thought this was funny!   She just kept saying, “I told you it doesn’t take much”, and then falling into fits of laughter again.  I don’t know why she thought it was funny; after all it was her sheets that were getting burnt up.  I decided that once this burning, screaming, fiery hell that was burning the flesh off my head and my eyes out of their sockets was over; we needed to discuss our empathy/sympathy feelings. 

This liquid fire burned for most of the night, I imagined I lay there looking like some macabre flaming head thing that haunts children’s nightmares.  But at some point I passed out from the pain, or as my Bride says “I fell asleep”.  I awoke to no pain, but figured I was still in shock.  I hurried to the mirror expecting to see my burnt out head, BUT…there was nothing.  Nothing I tell you!  Could this have been that same nightmare that haunted children’s dreams?  Could I have dreamt the whole thing?  I immediately knew this wasn’t true when my Bride started giggling as soon as she was awake enough.

This was a horrible traumatic experience that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, and I won’t be making fun of those folks who use oils.   Ok, that last part isn’t true, I will still be making fun of those who use oils…it is one of the small pleasures in life.  But I have learned a  new found respect for peppermint oils.

The Battle With Prehistoric Pterodactyl Bees

One of the wonders of living in southeast Texas, which I still am amazed by, is the fact that if you aren’t making hay…you shred your pastures.  Even after almost thirty years after coming from the Texas panhandle, where grass is a premium, mowing pastures boggles my mind.  But we have had a lot of rain this year, so when my grass/weeds are almost as tall as my horse I knew that I needed to mow my pasture.  You may think this is just a story about mowing, but this is a cautionary tale about the dangers of the giant pterodactyl killer bee (Gingantus Dinosaurus Apis Killus is the Latin, I think).   And lest you think this isn’t about horses, if you have any amount of pasture…at some point you will need to mow it.

 I had all kinds of tractor problems before I started, which leads to the fact that I am a mechanical idiot.  I said it and I’m not afraid to admit it.  Talk to me about a horse, or even a cow or lamb; I can speak semi-intelligently.  Talk to me about anything mechanical, and my eyes will glaze over and I may even drool out of the corner of my mouth.  If I can’t fix it with a set of jumper cables, we are in trouble!

But, I did finally get the tractor rolling and was busily shredding pastures most of the day.  It was hot and I was really glad when I had finally gotten to the last little bit up around my round pen.  To set the stage a little, we have a simple little bridge like thing that my daughter uses to teach her lambs to push.  It is a 4x8 sheet of plywood screwed to 2x8’s.  I have even used it to walk my colts over, so it is somewhat of an effective tool.  Not so, on this day.  I thought I would use the bucket of the tractor to get under the edge of it, lift a little and just push it out of the way while I mowed.  Seemed simple enough and it worked just fine, to a point…

If you have ever used a shredder, you know there is all kinds a grass and brush flying around, so after mowing most of the day I was not paying much attention to  what was flying around my head.  When I picked the bridge up, and started to slide it out of the way, I suddenly noticed that the stuff flying around my head had suddenly increased.  Still I was oblivious to my imminent danger.  All of the sudden somebody shot me in the back of my arm.  That’s when I noticed some giant prehistoric pterodactyl sized bees boiling out from underneath the bridge.  As the second one hit my hand and ripped a hunk a flesh out of it, I realized I no longer wanted to be on the tractor.  But the tractor was still moving in low first gear, so I knew I had a responsibility to shut it off.  It was at the moment that wanted to turn off the tractor that I noticed that my hand was moving in the same gear as tractor (I had never noticed how slow I was before).  The pterodactyl bees were now pinging me with all of the ferocity of pack of velociraptors.  I finally bailed off the tractor and immediately broke out my ninja moves as my first line of defense.  I started karate chopping and high kicking in an attempt to fight off the pack of giant bees.  At some point I realized that my karate skills were not helping in the least bit.  So the next line of defense was kicked in and I started running away from the tractor, all the while flailing…er karate chopping, the bees into oblivion.  I ran toward the house and covered the hundred yards in near Olympic speed, all the while waving my arms around and doing my best to distract the bees by shouting at them (as everybody knows, shouting at bees will distract them).  There were only about four pterodactyl bees that could match my speed, so we had a showdown at the gate.  I fought them to a bloody draw right there at the pasture gate and I am going to claim victory because they cannot dispute it. 
 

Actual Size may have been larger!
 

I knew that I’d been stung a bunch of times, so I thought it was prudent to get in the house and take an antihistamine.  My sprint from the barn area had caused me to run just a little short of oxygen, so I was sucking oxygen like a dying cow when I burst into the house.  My poor bride must have thought I was crazy, but she was trooper and killed the last three bees that had made into the house with me.  She said that she thought I had cut my foot off with the shredder or something…not just a few little bees.  Obviously she had killed the baby bees, because the ones that I fought at the barn were of a much, much larger variety.

As I close, I will just say…be careful out there, it that time of year.  Whether it’s snakes or giant pterodactyl bees; whether you’re on a horse or a on a tractor, pay attention to what’s going on around you.

Scamper the Wonder Horse

Scamper the Wonder Horse was my first horse; well to say she was a horse was stretch.  Scamper was a pony, my Dad bought her for me and she was mine; but a horse?  I think not.  I think he paid maybe twenty-five dollars for her…or maybe he traded nine chickens for her.  I’m not really sure, but she was mine and I was as proud as any five year old could be.  She was the beginning of my cowboy career and I had plans to be the next Jim Shoulders and Phil Lyne all rolled into one.

But before my cowboy career could begin, Scamper had a few kinks that needed ironing out.  Not huge issues, just things like laying down when she didn’t want to go and running off when she did want to go.  There wasn’t a whole lot of in between with Scamper.  But it wasn’t a big deal for a top hand like I was going to be.  It was just a chance to show the world a what a wolf of the world looked like.

The first thing we dealt with was the running off, and really the running off wasn’t that huge a deal.  Heck, I could ride her as fast as she could run.  It was all the things she would brush me against the concerned me!  She would run off (which consisted of a combination of her bone jarring trot and her ground hammering lope) with me pulling on both reins for all I was worth and Dad would start hollering, “Just pull one rein, just pull one rein”

That was easy for him to say, he wasn’t riding this wild mustang that I was riding.  I couldn’t hear him anyway; I was way more concerned with dying.  We would bolt around the arena, or around the barn, with her brushing up against things trying to knock me off and me pulling for all I was worth to get her to stop.  Once Dad had several young horses tied to the fence when Scamper ran off.  She ran up between the fence and those young horses.  You would have thought it would have caused a big wreck, but other than undoing all of Dad’s training, breaking a few lead ropes and catching those lead ropes under my chin as I laid back in the saddle….it went surprisingly well.

The laying down was the other issue that I needed to work out with her.  When she didn’t want to go anymore, she would just lay down.  Didn’t matter where you were or what you were doing.  She’d just quit.  I spent many a day jumping up and down on her sides trying to get her to get back up.  All she would do was just lay out on her side like she was just waiting to die.  And I can tell you, there were many time I wished she would have died…or that I could have killed her!

We got most of these kinks worked out in the arena and Dad finally felt comfortable enough to take me with him to check cows.  I was some kinda excited.  I left the house in all my cowboy gear ready to show my Dad what a hand I had become.  I had my best hat, my boots, my rope  and my chaps.  I also had what no self-respecting cowboy would be without; I had my pistol in the holster on my hip.  I, not only was ready to do cowboy work, I was dressed properly to perform these important actions. 

 

Dad was riding a big gelding we called Festus. 

Now Festus, it seemed to me, was nineteen feet tall with a head that was almost that long too.  So, Scamper and I did have somewhat of a hard time keeping up.  The best we could manage was to travel a little ways back of them, in her spine battering trot.  At one point, I started to wonder if I would ever have kids (just kidding, what five year old thinks about having kids?).  I couldn’t have been prouder though.  I was going to do real live cowboy work on my own horse, with my Dad.  Whoo Hoo!

As we traveled along, suddenly Dad kicked Festus into a lope and they soared over this irrigation ditch.  It probably wasn’t a huge ditch, at least not for Festus.  They cleared it rather easily and Dad pulled up on the other side to check on me.  I pulled ol’ Scamper to a stop at the edge of the ditch and it might as well have been the Atlantic Ocean.  I felt like, not only was I riding the smallest horse in the world, but that I was the littlest kid too.

But, my Dad was there to encourage me.  He didn’t say too much, no long speeches for him that day.  He just said, “You can make it”.  If it was one thing I believed, it was whatever my Dad told me.  Heck I was the kid he could get to jump off the top of the garage into his arms…man, after writing that down…I wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer was I?  But I digress…back to the ditch.

I turned Scamper around and rode back toward the house, when I was about twenty yards away I turned around and lined her up on the ditch.  I took the end of my reins and started whipping her over and under, I knew that we needed a lot of speed to cross that Grand Canyon of an irrigation ditch.  I would like to say that she took off with all of the speed of a thouroghbred racehorse, but we were pretty much in that same spleen splattering trot/lope thing.  But she was going somewhat faster.  As we neared the ditch, I started having visions of us flying over that ditch somewhat like Pegasus.  That we would clear it and I would come to a sliding stop like the top professionals that we were.  I could just picture my Dad’s chest swelling up with pride, knowing that his legacy was going to continue in a grand fashion.  There would be dancehall gals singing and everyone would be beating me on the back in congratulations and buying me drinks……of milk.

As we raced toward the edge of the ditch, with all of the brain rattling, kidney collapsing speed that could be mustered by a short legged pony; Scamper must have been feeling all of the confidence that I was oozing, because at about ten feet from the ditch, she jumped. She surely must have thought that she grew wings.

To say we missed would be an understatement.  We landed smack dab in the middle of the ditch and sunk to the bottom.  Obviously not a wide ditch, but it was deep.  Both of us went under and came back up spraying water like a couple of Beluga whales.  As we scrambled out, to my horror…I could hear my Dad laughing.  I was cold and wet, not the least bit happy about the situation and I had a new found hate in my heart for this worthless, early jumping, nine chicken pony.  But my Dad…he just couldn’t stop laughing.  I just knew that I could no longer call myself a cowboy, I mean, come on…any hand worth his salt could have made that jump, right?

Dad finally got himself under control and shared with me some of the wrecks he had growing.  He let me know part of being a cowboy was celebrating the wrecks that you have.  Laughter is contagious and eventually I laughed a little too.  It wasn’t until much later that I realized that this was part of the initiation that goes along with being a cowboy.  If you haven’t been a wreck or two, then you probably have done much.

You know, I don’t really recall what happened to Scamper.  I just remember I started riding real horses at some point.  I supposed Dad traded her off to the next growing cowboy, or maybe he sold her for twelve chickens.  I don’t know.

Jake, Wanda and the Weather

This is the story of Jake and Wanda, Jake and Wanda are not their real names.  I have changed the names to protect someone from being beaten severely about the head and shoulders.  I like Jake and would not want to see harm come to him.

Jake and Wanda had gone to college together and at some point had fallen in love.  It was in Jakes mind to ask Wanda to marry him, but fear and lack of a clear cut goal had caused him to hesitate.  So he just vacillated hoping that things would just work out.  As is the case most of the time, Jake was wrong.  But that is not what this story is about.

 

Jake had plans to continue his education after college as a cowboy and horse trainer.  He was already a pretty fair hand, and had grand plans to have his own place in less than five years.  He had not thought of what it might mean to bring Wanda into this plan that was in his mind.  Wanda came from a different world, one of stability and steady paying careers.  In retrospect, Jake was going to be asking a lot.  He was going to be asking her to join him in the low paying, sometimes no paying world of the start-up professional horse trainer.  Obviously Jake had not thought things through, but that’s not what this story is about either.  This story is about Wanda’s Daddy’s truck.

Wanda’s Daddy had given her his truck to drive to college after spring break, and oh how her Daddy loved that blue Chevy half ton truck.  Instructions were given that no one, and he meant NO ONE but she was to drive this truck.  Wanda was true to her commitment until the weekend she was going to bring Jake home to meet her parents.  It had hurt Jakes manly pride to be driven around and after considerable begging he managed to convince her to let him drive that blue truck.  I suppose the begging did not bother his pride as much as being driven around, I don’t know…sometimes the workings of Jakes mind were hard to fathom.

 

The plan was to leave early in the morning and head south toward her home, but nature threw a wrench into the plans.  When they arose that morning, there was about a foot of snow on the ground and most of the roads were iced over.  But Wanda was going home to see her Momma and Daddy and Jake could not convince her otherwise.  On the upside for him, she was a little fearful to drive on the ice.  So Jake got to drive!

They headed out, going south and Jake drove as appropriately as the ice would allow.  After they had been on the road for about an hour the sun had come up enough that the ice melted off of the black top.  Of course Jake put his foot into the carburetor and they skedaddle down the road.  They were making good time and Jake had the idea they would arrive well before the timeline established by her Daddy.  This, in his narrow mind, was a good thing.

The country was starting to get just a little bit hilly, so a person just didn’t know what the road looked like until you topped the next rise.  Wanda, since she was in love with Jake, was sitting beside Jake in the courting seat and Jake, since he was in love with Wanda, had his arm around her.  They were discussing their plans for the near and far future.  Jake was hammering on that blue truck and they were scooting right along and the next rise revealed a horrific site.  They topped over that rise and there was nothing but snow pack on the road as far as they could see.  Being the prolific driver that he was, Jake immediately got off the gas.  But they were still going much too fast and the truck started to fishtail.

Jake never moved his arm from around Wanda and started to work that steering wheel back and forth to keep the truck on the road.  And in true cowboy fashion, Jake never lost his cool or removed his arm from around Wanda.  If fact, he wasn’t really concerned even when the truck started spinning around.  He said, “as long as we were on the blacktop I knew we would just slide, I didn’t get scared until we went off the road and hit the dirt”. 

Wanda, on the other hand, seemed to have lost the ability to speak but one word.  As the truck started fishtailing and spinning around like a kid’s toy, she repeated it over and over “jus... jus… jus…jus… jus…jus…”  It seemed, to her, like they spun for hours before the truck stopped.  In true Daddy’s girl fashion, the first thing she thought of was her Daddy’s truck.  She just knew they had hit the fence and there were dents.  But the Lord seemed to be looking out for them that day, because not only did they live, but the truck had come to rest about one inch from a fence post.  Not a scratch one!

Needless to say, they slowed down.  But they hadn’t driven much further when Jake realized they had a tire going flat.  It seems all that spinning had broken the seal on the sidewall of the tire.  So, Jake went out in the slush and cold and started working on the tire.  At this point, Jake had lost his sense of humor or maybe it had warped a little.  At one point, due to the design of Chevy trucks, he was on his belly (in the slush and cold) removing the tire from underneath the truck.  It was at the point a helpful trucker stopped to see if he could offer a hand.  You wouldn’t think he would state the obvious, but his first words were “did you have a flat tire?”

Jake, being just a tad cranky and somewhat of a smart alec, said “no sir, I rotate my tires when they are due no matter where I’m at!”  Needless to say, the trucker laughed got back in his truck and drove off.  Seems he did not appreciate Jakes humor and figured this dumb cowboy could change the tire by himself.

Jake finished changing the tire and they drove to the next town and got it fixed.  Jake called the Highway Patrol and was told the road was icy all the way to Wanda’s.  So they made the executive decision to turn back around and go back to the college.

There are more stories about Jake and Wanda, but this one is my favorite.  As I said before, this is not their real names and I won’t tell who they are.  If you recognize them, I hope you don’t tell either.

Flying Cats and Ranch Security

It has been a looong while since I wrote anything.  So I thought I would write something and start this thing back up.

My Dad was a feedlot cowboy, which means we always had horses.  They were not push button, can only do one job horses.  They were the tools of his trade.  The same ones that us kids rodeo’d on, where they same ones he used in the feedlot.  We always had a couple of colts, or in some cases five or six year olds, that we were starting at the house.  After about 30 rides, Dad would then take them to the feedlot and ride them for 90 days.  Ninety days of pushing cattle around, dragging roped ones and opening gates made for some pretty broke ponies.  My brother and I were usually the ones that started these “colts”, me probably more than him.  I think that had something to do with my level of brains….

At one time we had this little T-Cross mare, she was pretty sharp looking…kinda that old timey quarter horse type: square, blocky and solid.  For whatever reason we never really started riding her, we would pull her up and mess around with her for a day or two and then turn her back out.  I suppose because she was ours and any customer horses took precedence over her.  After all they were paying.  We called her Misty and Misty didn’t really get started good until she was about six.  Now Misty wasn’t a  big wild bronc by any means.  In fact, once we started riding her, you had to pedal for all you were worth to keep her moving.  I always said that she wore me out faster than walkin’.  Except for one time…

I had ridden her about 15-20 times, so I thought she was really going well.  With a little work you could lope her all over the pasture and even come in for a somewhat bouncy, jilted stop.  I’m sure I was a shadowridin’ son-of-a-gun!  I thought I was a he-wolf of a hand and the world had better get ready.

We always had four or five dogs and about the same amount of barn cats, so at some point every evening there was a commotion.  The cats seemed to be a little smarter (gulp, am I going to say this?) than the dogs because they never let themselves be caught out in the open.  Except once….

I was ridin’ ol’ Misty up close to the barn, admirin’ my shadow and how good things looked.  Why, I had the world by the tail.  There wasn’t a better hand than me, most anywhere.  As I rode along I heard the usual ruckus raised when they had gotten a cat on the run.  I was working on stopping and backing so we weren’t moving much.  I kept noticing that the ruckus with the dogs kept getting closer.  I finally looked up and all five dogs had a big orange tom cat on the run.  Now Tom had let himself get caught out in the open and was runnin’ like his tail was on fire as fast as he could for high ground.  And since there were no trees in the pasture, I noticed to my horror that Tom was headed straight for Misty and me, with the dogs in joyous pursuit about five feet behind him.  At about eight feet Tom jumped into the air and flew toward us. 

At that point, Misty noticed the ruckus.  Her head flew around toward the commotion, but even she was too slow for the blazing orange streak that was now airborne.  Tom landed with all claws out, one front and one back leg hooked into my fine Navajo saddle blanket, while the other front and back leg were desperately clawing to get a grip in what now appears to have been tender horse flesh.  Add in the fact the dogs were still in hot pursuit barking and howling like a pack of wild beasts, this was now too much for Misty to handle.

To put it mildly, we left the country.  We left the country like Satan was riding one of the hounds of hell and was swinging a lariat trying to drop a loop on us to brand and ear tag us.  She ran faster that I had ever experienced with her before, I really had no idea she was that fast.  Of course my friend was still attached to the saddle blanket, as cats sometimes get attached to things when their claws are out.  Tom was probably looking somewhat like a kite on a short string, squalling like a banshee; wanting nothing more than to be loose from the whole situation.  Also added to the mix was the wolf pack that was now very excited to be chasing not only a cat, but also a horse.  They were probably grinning like crazy thinking, “can this day get any better?!?!  What a great and wondrous day!” 

As we got toward the end of the pasture, Tom finally loosed himself from the saddle blanket.  I’m sure he had somewhat of a spill, but his welfare had ceased to be at the top of my priority list. The good news was that this distracted the wolf pack somewhat.  They immediately lit into the cat, he of course had landed on all fours (how do cats do that?) and immediately skedaddled up an electric pole.  The dogs appeared somewhat disappointed, but were glad to take up the chase again with the horse and I.  Misty and I were working on our second lap around the pasture and as we passed them, they heard the siren call of a running horse. They leaped into action to help slow us down, jumping in front of Misty right before we got the electric pole.

Technically, they did their job.  She jammed on the brakes and I did a pretty fair impression of Superman and yard darted into the midst of the wolf pack, which seemed to create a large amount of excitement in itself.  Looking at it from the dogs’ point of view, their master had dismounted to play with his faithful and brave ranch security team.  They were wagging, slobbering and licking all over, just excited that I would venture from my lofty position to mingle with them.  From my point of view, I wanted to kill all of them!

The mare trotted back to the barn and was waiting for me, only a little jittery.  She turned into a nice little mare and some people from Oklahoma bought her for their grandkids later on.  They were as happy as they could be, I’m just glad they did see the flying cat and ranch security episode.

Eleven Year Old Brilliance

I don’t like winter; I think anything below 65 is freezing.   I have often contemplated moving further south, like to Mexico.  But my language skills have always been a barrier.  I know a few Spanish cuss words, but the balance of my espanol is pretty slim.  I suspect that I would probably get beat up if I moved down there and not even know why.  So I will stick to the gulf coast of Texas, where winters are a total of 20-30 cold days and the rest are pretty good.  Of course this is just my opinion, but then I’m doing the writing...so mine’s the only one that counts right now!

Now when I was a kid, growing up in southeastern Colorado, there was plenty of winter to go around.  There were weeks that we would be snowed in and could not get out of our driveway.  And being in the “kid” stage, snow was still fun.  Of course fun was defined as when we could do what we wanted to do and not what Dad wanted us to do.  So “fun” varied from day to day when there was snow on the ground.  Snow was fun when you sliding down a hill and not so much fun when you were holding wood for the chainsaw.  Of course, when you have snow you also have ice.  Ice is fun when you are sticking it down your sister’s neck.  It’s not much fun when you have to chop it out of a stock tank and therein lays the story…

My Dad was, as still is, full of good advice.  One of these pearls of wisdom was on the skill of chopping ice.  Whether you are chopping a hole in a pond or a stock tank, you always chop a bigger hole than you need and scoop the ice out.  The hole will freeze up smaller, so if it is bigger…it will stay open longer.  If you don’t fork out the chopped ice, it will freeze faster…thus your animals will not have anything to drink.  Looking back, this makes perfect sense.  As a young hon-yak, I tended to only do enough to keep me out of trouble and would take the least amount of time.  So I was always chopping a small hole in the ice.  After all the cows and horses noses weren’t more than eight, or so, inches around…right?  I never forked the broken ice out, any animal worth its salt, could push right through that ice…right?  I was a dumb little nut.

One day my brother and I were riding the scoop shovel down the hill by the hay meadow (isn’t that what any kid worth a flip would be doing?) and had been happily doing this for most of the day.  It had been my turn to chop the ice and I, being the unreliable little degenerate that I was, had only chopped a small hole in the ice.  I knew this would probably come back to bite me later, but there was sledding to be done and I wanted to do my fair share.  I always figured I could chop it out later in the day.  Ain’t that like a young cowboy…just living for the moment!

That particular day it had been way below freezing all day and Dad happened to check the tanks.  Wouldn’t you know it; there was no longer any hole in the ice.  He, being the stockman that he is, went ahead and fixed the problem.  Then he came looking for my brother and me.  I sure he was mad at us, me for not doing a complete job and Cully just for being associated with me.  When he found us we got a lecture and a job.  The lecture was on our responsibility as owners of animals and the job was because Dad wasn’t a big spanker.  I would have rather had the spanking because it over in a minute.  Dad punishments tended to last all day.  I think that day he had us start shoveling the driveway instead of waiting for the county to snow plow it open.  Of course, Cully “Guilt by Association” Johnson (my brother) was a little peeved at me.  The next day, Cully let me know pretty quickly that I was going to be the guy chopping ice since I threw him under the bull (so to speak). 

So, a little sullenly, I headed down to chop ice.  I knew that today, I had better do this right…I was pretty sure Dad would check up on me later.  Needless to say the ice was considerably thicker than yesterday.  But I had an ax, so I went to choppin’ with gusto.  After about two minutes I had a little tiny hole chopped out, not much bigger than the ax head.  I raised the ax up for what I know was going to be a mighty ice shattering swing.  As my downward swing started I noticed something was drastically wrong.  As I watched in horrified slow motion, that ax head slid off the end of the ax close to the bottom of the swing and slipped ever so gently into that miniscule hole in the ice.  Never to be seen again.  The next words out of my mouth were of the variety my uncle George had taught me and I won’t repeat them here.  I knew I was going to be in a mess of trouble and what happened next was right of the bible.  Some would say that I had a temper tantrum.  I prefer to think that, at that moment I was possessed by a demon.  I commence to hollering and cussing and flayin’ around shovels and buckets. 

Once the possession was over and I was somewhat returned to normal, I started trying to think my way out of the situation.  I knew that I was supposed to be paying attention to what I was doing, and I am now pretty sure that Dad would have understood what had happened, but then I wasn’t so sure about it.  At the time, I just understood that I was in a mess of trouble.  Part of any thinking process is thinking outside the box.  In a flash, I came up with a way to break the ice.  It was still pretty thick, so I figured I could just jump up and down until I heard it crack.  Then I could take the pitchfork, break it and fork the ice out.  Genius, huh?

So there I was, jumping up and down…on a frozen over stock tank.  I was carefully listening for that telltale crack.  But after five minutes, my patience had worn out.  I was just jumping.  I finally said enough is enough.  One final time I gave a mighty leap and with all of the weight a 60 pound boy can muster, slammed my feet into the ice.  The next moment I found myself up to my chest in icy cold water, standing in a hole that was just barely bigger around than my body.  I again was possessed by that demon, because not only my was my body standing in what amounted to a great big cup of ice, but my new high top boots (that I’d got for Christmas) were also in the water.  I started flailing around trying to get out, which didn’t amount to much more than waving my arms and hollering!  I couldn’t do much more than that because those little tiny holes I had been chopping were the only weak spot in the ice, and that was all that broke.  I could get no leverage to pull myself out, I was for all intent and purposes…trapped.  I knew eventually Dad would come down to check on me when I didn’t show up at the house by nightfall, but I figured by then I would be a Corysicle.  I was just hoping that I was yelling loud enough that someone would hear me.

Cully happened to be close enough to hear and came to see what had happened, and being the good big brother that he was….he fell to his knees laughing at me.  After the proper amount of brotherly laughter and teasing, which in my mind seemed about ten hours, I started to think that everything below my chest was about froze off.  Cully finally got enough composure to pull me out and let me tell you, I was dang cold!  My teeth were chattering like a machine gun and I couldn’t feel any of my lower regions, but then at that point I wasn’t even sure I still had lower regions.  Being the good big brother that he was, Cully was not about to get in trouble again.  He made sure we chopped and forked the ice out of the hole, he even insisted that we make the hole bigger.  Of course, when I say we…I mean he made me do it while he supervised.  I could only think about two things:

1.       It was cold and I was cold.  If you’ve ever wondered how cold a well diggers butt was, I probably could have told you that day.

2.      My new tall top boots were soaking wet and still full of water, I just knew they were ruint!

After he made me finish, I hot footed it up to the house (there’s an oxymoron, my feet were anything but hot).  I got to the house and realized I had a new problem.  The water in my brand new tall top boots had created suction and I could not get them off my feet.  I had all of my brother’s help I wanted for the day, so I was not about to ask him.  But I figured that if I could get the water out of the boots they would eventually come off.  I had remembered reading a John Erickson book where he had a similar problem, so in my eleven year old brilliance…I thought I would try that process.

I laid down on my back and put my feet in the air, thinking that the water would drain out and I could get my boots off to change clothes.  There is not an eleven year old in the world yet that understands the law of gravity and water flow.  I was no exception.  As I raised my legs that water came cascading down my legs and too late I realized where that water was headed.  I had just thought I was numb from standing in that stock tank, it turns out that I wasn’t all that frozen after all.  Now I won’t go into detail about where that ice water hit and the results of said ice water bath, but I think it goes unspoken (by most men anyway) that I had a reason to commence yelling again.  Mom came running out to see what had happened, and all she could do was laugh, what is it with my family?  Here I was I dire straits, with frozen nether regions and all they can do is laugh? 

On the plus side, she did help take my boots off and they were not ruined.  Once they had dried and I had warmed up a little, I headed back outside.  After all, wasn’t there some sledding to be done?  And what kid worth his salt wouldn’t be doing that on a snow day?

Tight, Scary and Uncomfortable

Right after college I worked a few months for a place called Tequila Flats.  It was a quarter horse place and the guy that owned it also boarded some horse for the kids from local college, where incidentally he went just a year ahead of me.  Nice guy, probably more money than sense, but still an alright guy.  Why he hired me, I don’t know.  But I got to work with another guy (Doug) who worked there and I respected him as a trainer.  So it was a win-win for me. 

When I started, it was right around Thanksgiving.  So several of the college boarders were going to be out of town, we had a full book as far as boarders were concerned.  But the owner, ever the guy looking to make money just couldn’t turn down one more boarder.  In fact, he told her that we (Doug and I) would be over to pick the horse up where she was currently boarding.  Ever the faithful employees, we headed over to pick this gal’s horse up.

When we drove in, I noticed a little narrow, short one horse trailer. 

 

I also noticed this big ol’ black thoroughbred gelding running in the pasture.  I should have been clued in right there, but ya know….clueless.  The girl was red faced and out of breath, again…should have been a clue.  We jumped out like the professional trainers that we were and immediately deduced that she could not catch her horse.  Being the ever prepared professional trainers, Doug had the foresight to bring a lariat.  So he immediately turned around and grabbed the rope.  Incidentally, on the ride over we had been talking about how to fore foot a horse.   Fortuitously we had happened upon a chance to put talk into action.  Doug stepped into the pen and was about to show all of his roping skills.  Somewhat anticlimactically the horse immediately stopped running when he started swinging the rope and Doug was able to walk right up to him.  We were disappointed, to say the least.

As we lead the horse up to the large two horse trailer, we chatted up the girl.  She told us that she and her parents had brought the horse all the way from California in that little one horse trailer, and didn’t even have to stop once!  Now I was pretty good at math and I quickly added up the miles between California and Lamar, Colorado; the answer was a whole bunch of miles.  I started feeling a little sorry for that big ol’ black thoroughbred.  Her trailer was tiny and I couldn’t even imagine Blackie being stuffed in there for what was probably about an 18 hour trip.  I bet he looked like a sausage that had its skin split, just bursting out everywhere.  But, lucky for him we professional trainers were there to rescue him from that gal’s ignorance.

As soon as we walked up to the trailer, Blackie balked.  I can’t say as I blame him.  We knew it was going to take some time at that point.  So for an hour we coaxed and cajoled, trying to get Big Boy into the trailer.  We used grain in a bucket, grain on the floor of the trailer and even tried waiving that rope around his behind (without actually hitting him, of course).  When the first hour was finally up, our tempers were also up.  Now we had not spoken a cross word to that horse, yet.  After all, the owner was still there watching us.  But, Blackie (Big Boy and several other names I was calling him in my head) was having no part of that trailer.  The next hour was spent being just a little more aggressive trying to get him into the trailer.  We actually gave him several soft love taps on the hind end, we linked our hands behind him and tried to push him in (that’s kind of funny now…I weighed about 150 pounds and Doug was about 175, the horse was about 1250…we thought we could push him in?).  After all of these gyrations, we were still no further along that when we started.  After the second hour, we were no longer calling him the other names in our heads.  The words were coming out of our mouths, probably to the shock of the young lady.  Tempers were flaring.  At one point, I quickly stepped back with the thought of kicking Blackie in the belly as hard as I could. 

This is a time tested method that generally all cowboys have tried at one time or another, with the same amount of success.  The process actually starts earlier and is set up by the inability of a cowboy to get an animal to act in the manner in which the cowboy wants.  It is normally about a two hour process and toward the end includes vocabulary that speaks to the heritage of the animal.  Once the vocabulary stage is reached it is not much further until the cowboy steps back quickly, you don’t want to think about the process – action is required, and lashes out with his boot and attempts to crush several ribs of the animal in question.  Now with all of the power a half starved cowboy can produce you would think there would be instant results.  There usually is, typically all you succeed in doing is breaking your toe and scaring the animal in question.

I would like to say that it was our superior horsemanship skills that loaded that horse, but probably when I stepped back so fast, it startled Blackie.  He lunged forward into the large two horse trailer and Doug quickly slammed the door shut and latched it.  We headed home discussing the heritage of the horse, the gal and any drivers on the road that drove to slow…or too fast…or just were on the road.

Needless to say, we knew when she came to pick up her horse it was going to be just as much trouble to catch and load him as it was before, but that’s another story for another time.

Now you would not think there could be a biblical lesson in this, but I believe there is.  Think about that horse not wanting to get in that trailer because he remembers that last time he was in there.  It was tight and scary and he was there for a long time.  All of these are bad experiences for a claustrophobic animal.  He wanted no part of going back in there, even though we did not mean him any harm (at first).  We only wanted what was best for him (at first).

I remember the first time the preacher asked me to cover for him on Sunday.  My first thought was that he had lost his mind, what in the world made him ask me?  But, I wanted to be obedient so I finally gave in to the call God put on me.  That Sunday I was pretty nervous.  My shirt was too tight around the collar, the songs were too short and several other things that I was uncomfortable about.  Just like that black gelding; It was tight, scary and uncomfortable for me.  Long story short, I gave what is probably in the top 10 as shortest sermons ever and was relieved that it was over.  I thought, “I’m never doing that again!’

You better watch what you say; God has a way of saying “I’ve got better plans for you than that”.  So the next time God called me to talk, I was still as nervous as before.  I stressed during the preparation before I realized that God didn’t want to hurt me; he only wanted what was best for me.  The day of the talk, there I was nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.  Remembering all of the stress I had before.  God finally grabbed ahold of me and said, “Trust Me on this”.  He told me that I had prepared and that I needed to trust that the Holy Spirit would do all of the work.  It’s funny, I spoke for about 45 minutes.  At one point I looked down and saw how far along I was; for a second or so, I panicked a little…I thought maybe I had skipped some parts.  But, the Holy Spirit grabbed me again and said, “I got this”.  I was a vessel for God; he was just using me to pour out his words.  See I was really nervous, because I remembered how nervous I was on the previous sermon, so I thought I couldn’t do this one.  I was right, I COULDN”T DO IT!  God did it.

How easy is it to trust what God says, even if it’s tight, scary and uncomfortable?

Blessed are all who fear the Lord, who walk in obedience to him.  You will eat the fruit of you labor; bblessings and prosperity will be yours.

Psalms 128:1-2

Vinculum Masculini Cat

I read Save the Cowboy's blog post about the difference between being “religious” and being “Christ-like”, and I don’t know about everyone else…but it got me to thinkin’.  It sure is easy to jump up and attack someone who presents the Gospel different than what is considered the norm.  For a few days I just tried to wrap my head around all of the drama surrounding it.  Hard to believe people can take and read into a picture exactly what they want to attack.  I thought about this clear into Thursday.

Thursday I dropped off a friend at a men’s retreat and during the time before I left we were talking, sharing stories…just shooting the breeze.  He is pretty funny and some of the stories will most likely show up here, maybe with a little artistic license.

This is the almost true story of the funem masculini cati.  When I get through with the story, you can count yourself as educated in the Latin language…just a little.

Billy was only five or six at the time and he was given a little rope, maybe a quarter inch in diameter.  He worked really hard at his skills and was a pretty fair hand with that little rope.  He could rope fence posts, a nail sticking out of the wall and dogs.  He was a regular Will James, pitching his rope onto everything and anything.

His Dad worked at a dairy and Billy went with him a lot.  One day he was sitting there practicing with his little rope and the barn tom cat was just sitting there…licking himself.  Billy thought, “I wonder if I can rope that cat?”  Up to this point he had never had the opportunity to try it.  He had always wanted to, but providence had never smiled on him.  Well it seems that the stars and moon has aligned, because this cat was within roping range!

Well, quick as a whistle his rope shot out and settled rather neatly around ol’ Tom’s neck.  Billy thought, “Will you look at that, I roped him.”  Of course when you rope a critter, the first thing a good hand will do is jerk the slack out of that rope.  When the rope tightened around the cat’s neck, Billy said the cat jumped straight up in the air, at least 12 or 15 feet.  And as any good hand would do, Billy pulled him back down.  As soon as the cat hit the ground, it jumped in the air again, almost to the same height.  This little act went on for four or five times.  The cat would jump up and pull away, and Billy would pull him back down to earth.  You would have thought that this part of the story was the part where things were western.  You would be wrong.

On about the fifth time ol’ Tom was jerked back to the ground, I guess he had enough.  On that fateful fifth time, he ran up the rope like a mad bull.  He latched onto Billy’s leg with all four claws and all 2,993 teeth.  Billy heard some awful screeching and squalling (I would suspect some of it was his own) and he went to flailing with the tail of his little rope on that demon that was not attached to his leg.  He whupped and wailed but could not remove not one claw or tooth from his leg.

His Dad finally came up to help, but the cat was so incensed that he could not be removed with normal measures.  Billy’s dad finally took a scoop shovel and pried ol’ Tom from Billy’s leg.  Of course part of the problem was now the rope had to be removed from the cat.  But Mr. Tom was still reverted back to his prehistoric form as a saber tooth tiger.  Billy’s dad finally put the cat on the ground under the shovel and stood on it to get the rope off.  Mr. Tom was not a happy camper, to say the least.  They removed the rope and Tom shot away from them like he was fired out of a gun.  The cat didn’t show back up for about a week.

Billy did not learn his lesson on roping cats and there is another story that I will save for later.  BUT I believe this is more than just a funny story.  I think there is a point to be made here.

 

Sometimes when people are convicted of their sins by Christ, they come back up the rope and attack the ones that are sharing the Gospel.  We are a little like that cat, Christ convicts us and when we feel a little pressure…we jump in the air, squall and carry on.  Doing our best to try and get away.  When that doesn’t work, we go on the offensive and start pointing out all of the things that are wrong with the people trying to help.  Heck, sometimes I’m like that cat, even now.  Christ will grab ahold of me for some reason, and I commence to fighting against him.  All I have to is submit to the pull, why’s that so hard?

It’s because I don’t like to be wrong, nor does anybody really.  Being right means we are in control, masters of our universe.  Being wrong means we have to admit that we have no control, that God was/is right and we are like Sargent Schultz…we know nnnoothinggg!

The thing to remember is that when that Pharisee…er…I mean…cat comes running back up that rope…they are under conviction.  They’re kicking and fighting with Christ…pray for them where they’re at, love on ‘em…but continue to point out the truth.

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.  The commandments, “you shall not commint adultery”, “you shall not murder”, “you shall not steal”, “you shall not cover”, and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command:  “love you neigjhor as yourself”

Romans 13:7-9

 

Stay faithful, my friends.

Cory

PS.  Almost forgot about the title.  Loosely translated into:  To rope the male cat.  How’s that for and educational story!