The guys at the morning Geezer Gang Gathering at the Short Stop were recently discussing some of the ins and outs of moving cattle. Their discussion awoke in my mind a “bull story” from the long-ago past, sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s.
I have friends who ranch near Havana — Kansas, not Cuba. They raise good Angus cattle. Back in those days I had a business reason to be in their locale about once a week and I often took advantage of their hospitality to fish and hunt on their property.
Well, one hot, muggy summer morning I arrived at my friends’ ranch and got invited to help them bring into the home corral an Angus bull that they needed to cull.
The four-man crew, including me, headed out to the distant pasture — some a’horseback and some on ATVs.
When we arrived, we soon discovered that Mr. Bull had no intentions of moving from his harem of cows. He dodged, ducked and back-tracked. He tried to stay in the middle of the herd. He used every ploy in the ‘bovine book of resistance” to keep from getting separated from “his girls.”
But, eventually, the round-up crew prevailed with persistence and got Mr. Bull separated from the cows, out the pasture gate, and headed toward the home corral.
But, by this time Mr. Bull was heated up, both physically and mentally. He wuz panting and slobbering. And, as often happens with a stressed bovine brute, he sulled. He went under every shade tree he could find and belligerently stood his ground. Then he ran and stood in the middle of a muddy pond and resisted our efforts to move him.
Finally, the guys on horses drove him from the pond and headed homeward again. Just outside the home corral there wuz a small barn in disrepair. So, naturally, Mr. Bull sought sanctuary in the shade inside the barn.
Well, it so happened that the barn wuz also where my friends had stored their aluminum fishing jon boat. It wuz just resting on the ground safely out of the weather.
So, imagine his consternation, when my friend dismounted and went on-foot into the barn to drive the highly stressed Angus from his hidey-hole, and his eyes fell on this scene.
Mr. Bull was exacting his “bulligerant” revenge the extreme bovine way. He wuz squarely standing with his overheated one-ton body in the middle of the aluminum jon boat and he wuz doing his level best to fill the boat simultaneously with both urine and manure.
Mr. Bull didn’t fill the boat, but he sure made a deep depression in the bottom of the boat and it definitely needed a good cleaning before it wuz used for fishing again.
***
A rural clergyman was driving down a dusty gravel road when he came upon a group of farm boys each about 10 years of age surrounding a dog. They were quite animated. Concerned, he stopped and asked them what they were doing.
One of the boys replied, “This dog is an old neighborhood stray. We take him home with us sometimes, but only one of us can take him home. So, we’re having a contest. Whoever tells the biggest lie can take this dog home for awhile for a pet.”
Of course, the reverend was shocked! “You boys should be ashamed of yourselves. You shouldn’t have a contest telling lies!” he exclaimed. “That’s not God’s way.”
He then launched into a 10-minute sermon against lying, beginning, “Don’t you boys know it’s a sin to lie?” and ending with, “Why, when I was your age, I never told a lie.”
There was complete silence for a minute or so. Then, as the reverend smiled with satisfaction that his impromptu sermon had gotten through to them, the smallest boy gave a deep sigh and piped up, “All right, give him the dog.”
***
My recent column about coyotes and bounties paid on them back in the days of my youth, prompted my good buddy, ol’ Willie Jay, from Mt. Vernon, Mo., to respond with a couple of coyote bounty stories of his own. I will neither vouch for the veracity of either of his stories, nor suggest that he stretched the truth. You decide. But here’s his first story:
“Milo, it wuz back in the 1940s that me and my best buddy cashed in on coyote ears. Only, then in Missouri the bounty wuz $2 for pups’ ears in the spring, but the bounty rose to $10-12 if it wuz after July. So we deep froze the ears we got in the spring until July when we could thaw them out and cash in on the higher bounty. I recall that the county clerk would look at the ears to see if the ears had ticks crawling that had unfroze back too life. So, he said, ‘Yep, they’re fresh. The ticks are crawling. Here’s your bounty.’ It wuz a heck of a deal, and I hope the statute of limitations has run out on coyote bounty fraud.
***
Here’s Willie’s second story: “Milo, once in 1958 a neighbor came to the house about 6 a.m, and told me to get my gun and come with him to kill a coyote on his pond dam. So, I got my 30-cal Remington auto and loaded up 6 rounds. Sure ‘nuf. There on the pond dam stood a coyote. It wuz just over a 100 yards. I put the crosshairs on it. ‘Bang.’
“He said, ‘You missed it.’ I looked and there wuz the coyote. So, I squeezed off again. Missed again. Did it again. Missed. Five times I missed. Then, the coyote started to run across the pasture in a hurry. I put the dead eye on it’s nose, squeezed the trigger and rolled it head over heels. Took six shots. We walked down to the pond, looked over the bank. There were 5 dead half-grown pups and the mother dead out in the pasture. We froze the ears until July and got enough money to build a 6-wire, 1/4 mile fence between us. The hedge corner post is still standing. Bet it’s the only fence in Missouri built with coyote bounty money.”
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Words of wisdom for the week: “Overweight is what happens when you live in a food’s paradise.” Have a good ‘un.
