Ridin’ Fence ~~ Community (the cat & the hen)

One of my half-bantam hens decided she was going to incubate her eggs in the milk barn but the milk barn is dedicated cat territory. I moved her to the brood house.

She abandoned the nest and returned to the milk barn and started another clutch. I moved her to a corner of the chicken house. She abandoned that nest and started another clutch. I shifted her to a kidding shed. She left that nest too and returned to the barn. I gathered her eggs for a couple weeks, hoping to encourage her to find a better place to set. Nothing doing. She was going to incubate her eggs right there in the corner of the milk barn under the edge of a roll of used carpet destined to be next winter’s door coverings.

“You loony hen, the cats are going to eat all your chicks,” I told her.

She wasn‘t listening. Her wings and beak had educated many a cat and she figured the barn was the best place for her nest. After the raccoon raid, I decided maybe I was the loony one. That rotten raccoon killed several of my setting hens and ate all their eggs, but it never did find her tucked away under a corner of used carpet that will be next winter’s barn insulation.

One day when I was checking on the grumpy little hen, I discovered that one of the young barn cats had delivered five kittens within eighteen inches of the hen’s nest.

“That was dumb,” I told the cat. “That hen will kill your kittens and eat them. I‘ve seen her kill and eat mice and your kittens are about that size.”

Momma cat wasn‘t listening. She was purring away, feeding her brood of black-and-white carnivores under the edge of the same piece of carpet hiding the hen.

Ah, it’ll be okay, I decided. She’ll move them in a few days. Long before the chicks hatch and that hungry hen comes off her nest.

I was partially right. When the kittens started opening their eyes, momma cat moved them three feet to the west – to the other end of the carpet.

Now that it was close to time for the chicks to be hatching, I was developing another concern. How to keep the cat from eating the chicks. A fluffy day-old chick is about two bites for a barn cat and ideal hunting practice for the now ambulatory kittens.

I checked on the hen every day, hoping to catch her with her chicks before they left the nest. I fixed a spot in the brood house with water and feed and she was going in there – like it or not.

One day it was mid afternoon before I peered through the barn window to check on the hen. Momma cat was on her side at the end of the carpet feeding her kittens, purring and kneading the air as only a happy cat can.

Momma hen had left the nest and was calling her fuzzy, fluffy, newly-hatched chicks toward the back of the barn where she was scratching in the straw.

In shocked surprise I watched as twelve chicks tumbled and bumbled their way out of the nest, across the carpet, over momma cat and her kittens, through the panel and over to momma hen.

Momma cat never moved. Not even when one of those bite-sized morsels stopped to rest on top of her, and another tumbled into the kitten pile.

Momma hen attacked me when I tried to move her chicks, so I left them. Three weeks later, they were still there. I checked daily, sometimes several times a day, just to remind myself that the world is full of wonders.

I have now seen kittens and chicks huddled together in a pile when an afternoon thunderstorm cooled the air unexpectedly. I’ve seen a lost chick follow momma cat around until momma hen came back for it. I’ve seen momma hen wade through a pile of five playful kittens and never peck a one.

I don’t know how it’s all going to turn out, but if a cat and a hen can raise their broods together, why can’t humans teach their children not to eat one another?

All rights reserved © 2008

Ridin’ Fence ~~ The great grease zirk hunt

I hate grease guns. They are a tool invented by some sadistic deity to remind me just how mechanically challenged I am.

To the males in my world, greasing equipment bearings is a chore anyone outside of diapers can do. Except me.

It is time to cut hay, and that means there is a whole line of equipment that needs field prepped. My husband handed me a grease gun and told me to use it while he and my brother slid the freshly resectioned sickle back into the swather header and timed it. I had managed to resection both cutter bars without making a blood sacrifice. I hadn’t even barked a knuckle. I guess I was feeling a little cocky because the sight of that grease gun didn’t send the usual shiver of apprehension up my spine.

I found the first three zirks on the end of the header and pumped grease in them. So far, so good. Those three bearings wouldn’t be seizing up from lack of lubrication. I had to use my hip to hold the barrel of the gun while I held the tip on the zirk with one hand and pumped with the other, but there wasn’t much grease on the barrel yet, so that went okay.

On the fourth zirk, the gun ran out of grease, so I hauled the gun into the shop and found another tube. I had the gun dismantled before I discovered it was airlocked, not greaseless. I managed to keep the majority of the grease inside. Anything over 50 percent is a majority, right?

I returned to the swather a little less confident. I was determined that this was not going to turn into some grease-based beauty treatment, but my hands were already ominously black and the gun barrel was slippery.

The next few zirks went okay; if I ignored the spreading black patches of grease on my shirt and jeans from bracing the barrel so I could pump the handle.

The header drive shafts had to be moved several times before everything lined up. All that digging round out of sight in old grease and dirt resulted in black hand prints not just on the header, but on my jeans. I also had a big smudge across my cheek and around one eye where the gnats were biting.

The zirk down next to the wheel refused grease. Not just once but repeatedly. I couldn’t actually see it refusing grease, but I could feel it every time it squished up around my fingers. I shook it off in disgust and a blob landed on my glasses. I scrubbed it off with the shoulder of my shirt.

I worked out a couple more airlocks and approached the engine compartment with trepidation.

I ducked under the frame and stood hunched under the engine looking for the zirks on the drive line. The first one was fairly cooperative. It only spit a little grease back at me, which landed on my shoe.

The second one required some impressive gymnastics to reach. The yokes were in just the right position to make me stretch my arm up into the engine and back down at an awkward angle to plug the tip in to the zirk. I couldn’t actually see the zirk, but I was right below it. I jiggled the tip to make sure it was firmly sealed on the zirk and pumped. It wasn’t firmly sealed.

My first indication that the zirk was refusing grease came in the form of a large wad landing on my forehead. I howled and tried to shake it off, but with my arm wound around the internal organs of the swather, there wasn’t much I could do. I gritted my teeth, worked the tip on, put my fingers down next to it and jiggled it around until, at last, two pumps made it into the bearing. The rest stayed on my fingers. I unwound myself and tried to flick the grease off my forehead with a finger. A grease-covered finger.

Only the crimper to go, I cajoled myself, kneeling down and digging through last year’s dust-caked grease in search of those elusive zirks.

The gnats attacked my ears and I scrubbed against the shoulders of my shirt. I knew better than to go digging after them with my fingers.

I found a couple of zirks and managed to work grease into them and, with a huge sigh of relief, crawled out from under the swather – assignment accomplished.

“I’m done!” I yelled in triumph.

“Did you get the ones on the ends of the header?” my husband asked from somewhere in the shop.

“Yeah!”

“Did you get the drive shaft?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you get the pivot on the back?” His voice was getting closer.

“Yeah.”

He came out of the shop, wiping his hands on a rag.

“Did you get the . . .” He choked, his expression a combination of shock, disgust and glee.

I frowned at him through the grease.

He tried again, “Did you get the crimper?”

“Yeah,” I growled. “But I couldn’t get the one by the tire on the other side.”

He looked at the well-smeared grease gun.

“Is there any grease left?”

I thrust the nasty thing at him. “I’m sure there is, just crawl under there and try the rear zirk on the drive shaft.”

He took it gingerly, trying to keep his hands clean.

That did it. I grabbed him in a big hug and, before he could wrench away, gave his bristly cheeks a big rub with my forehead.

“Arugh!” he squalled.

“I told you not to give her a grease gun!” my brother yelled from the depths of the shop. “She only gets about half the grease in the zirks!”

I started for the shop. I still had some grease on my hands that would contrast nicely with his clean shirt.

All rights reserved © 2008

Ridin’ Fence ~~ That, my friend, is a skunk

Lynn’s Ridin’ Fence articles just keep gettin’ better . . .

Skunks. There is just something morally reprehensible about a critter that fights with its behind. But I have to admit, it is effective.

I was rediscovering just how effective while trying to scrub enough skunk stench off the dog that we could both live with her. It really wasn’t her fault she was covered in that nasty yellow oil. She had been helping me chase a big boar skunk out of the chicken house so I could shoot it without flavoring the eggs for a month. We killed the skunk, but poor Sparky had been fired upon in the line of duty and we were both regretting it.

“You ought to bottle some of that stuff and send it to Roland,” my husband said holding his nose as he waded by my scrubbing project.

“Even if the postal service would take it, I don’t think Roland would open it,” I replied. My sinuses had shut completely down in self defense, so my voice was a bit warped.

“Ah, I bet he’d love offering people a sniff!”

I wasn’t too sure about that.

I’d met Roland when I was in Australia as an exchange student. He was 28, I was 16, and like all good Australian outdoorsmen, he wanted to know what a skunk smelled like. That request struck me dumb.

How do you describe the smell of a skunk to someone who lives on a continent where nothing defends itself with stink? Someone who has never seen that yellow mist or been forced to ride in a pickup with a dog soaked in it?

Finally, after several start-stop attempts, I said, “Mix rotten eggs and gasoline till you puke. That’s pretty close.”

From the height of his superior years, he rolled his eyes, laughed indulgently and informed me that “there’s no smell in the world that will make you puke.”

Now there was a comment I could respond to. I promptly informed him that he had never smelled a skunk and had no clue what he was talking about, so I would file that comment exactly where it belonged – in the uneducated idiot file. He chuckled politely. I offered to find one of those gag gift places that offer skunk scent in a perfume bottle, complete with atomizer on top. A mist of that and he would be heaving out his toenails, I told him. He just laughed and wandered off in search of a beer.

A few years later, he decided to pay us a visit in the United States. Being an outdoor sort, he wanted to see rural America. We arranged for him to spend a few days at my parents’ hunting and fishing and a few days with us. While we couldn’t offer him any big game, we could offer rabbits, coyotes and various varmints.

The first question he asked upon arrival at my parents’ house was “What does a skunk smell like?”

I was able to see the dumbfounded look from the other end as my brothers and father struggled to find a good answer to that question. Mom was smarter, she avoided the conversation.

My brother had hit a skunk with his pickup a few weeks before and there was still a faint, lingering aroma hovering about the right front corner.

“That’s a skunk,” my brother informed him.

Roland bent over and made sniffing noises around the bumper. “That smells like a boar fox, only a little stronger,” he said. There was a slightly superior tone in his voice.

“That’s just a whiff,” I told him.

He rolled his eyes at me, “There’s no smell in the world that will make you puke.”

The whole family chimed in with a chorus of “You ain’t never smelled a skunk,” but he wasn’t fazed.

A few days later, we drove by a dead skunk on the side of the road and Roland hurried to crank his window down. “Boy, that’s bad,” he said.

“That’s just a whiff,” I assured him.

He rolled his eyes at me.

A few days after that, the guys were out hunting rabbits after dark. As luck, fortune, or whatever would have it, they ran across a skunk. Any skunk within a mile of a chicken house is fair game, so my brother launched a .270 round that hit it in the behind.

My brother, being the sort of guy he is, wanted to make absolutely sure it wouldn’t be eating any more chickens. He drove up to it, cranked his window open, looked almost straight down at the carcass and said, “Yup, it’s dead.”

. . . . . . . . .

When the hunting crew arrived back at the house, my brother walked in grinning like a Cheshire cat and breathing out of his mouth. He has shot so many skunks that when his nose catches the merest whiff, it shuts down immediately. My husband followed him in, looking a bit green around the gills, but there was a triumphant gleam in his eye.

Poor Roland staggered in behind them, his skin the color of split-pea soup. He weaved his way across the living room and down the hall to the bathroom without a word.

I turned wide eyes on my brother.

“We found a skunk,” he said.

“He shot it,” my husband added.

“Had to make sure it was dead,” my brother continued.

My husband reopened the outside door and positioned the fan to circulate untainted air. “Blew it apart. Didn’t know if I was going to get out of the truck fast enough to let Roland out of the middle,” he finished.

An hour or so later, Roland reemerged from the bathroom, still green and still weaving. There was desperation in his voice. “I took a shower. I brushed my teeth. I snorted water. I can still smell it!” he wailed.

“That, Roland, was a skunk,” I told him.

Despite my offer to dispose of his clothes, or at least wash them for him, he carefully sealed them in a plastic bag and packed them in the bottom of his suitcase. Upon arrival back in Australia, he discovered just how vicious skunk spray is. The insidious chemical cocktail had contaminated his entire suitcase. He didn’t even offer his curious younger brother a whiff. He just tossed the whole thing. Store-bought souvenirs and all.

His baffled younger brother has informed me that Roland lives in chronic fear of a perfume bottle arriving from America. Maybe some day I’ll send him one.

All rights reserved © 2008

Ridin’ Fence ~~ Ten pounds of cowdog

Another classic Ridin’ Fence by Lynn Allen

Jesse was always the fastidious type. Very concerned about his cowboy image, he trimmed his mustache one whisker at a time to make sure it was just right.

He carried an extra pressed shirt hanging in the back window of his pickup so that if he had to make an emergency trip to town, he had a clean, wrinkle-free western shirt and matching gladrag to put on. He only drove pickups and only wore boots.

He had several different western hats but no caps. Caps were for farmers and he was a rancher. I think he even got married in Levi’s. He didn’t want to risk anyone thinking he wasn’t a real cowboy.

His cowboy image wasn’t quite as important to his wife. In fact, revenge from the female side of the household always seemed to include a poke at Jesse’s image.

She inherited a Cadillac from her aunt.

Cowboys don’t drive Cadillacs.

That was okay, he could ride in the passenger seat.

It was three years before he rode in that car – and only then because his pickup broke down and she came to get him in the car. I think it was the air conditioner that won him over. Bonnie always insisted it was the leather seats designed to be sat in by humans.

Then one day she came home with a poodle – a fluffy little white one that weighed about ten pounds.

To go with the car, she said.

Absolutely NOT! he said.

I would have loved to hear that conversation, but all I got to witness were the glowers Jesse shot at that fluffy little dog.

Just to twist the knife, she kept the little dog groomed. Not with a standard poodle clip, but she did have red toe nails and ribbons in her ears.

Candi was a rescue from a puppy mill. Surprisingly intelligent, and excited by her new rural world, she tagged along behind Jesse’s blue heeler, much to Jesse’s disgust. With her short legs, she couldn’t travel across the big pastures so she rode in a saddlebag on the back of Bonnie’s horse. If the heeler yapped or she heard Jesse whistle a command, that perfectly groomed little white head crowned with red ribbons, popped out of the saddlebag. If the situation looked interesting, she would yip for Bonnie to put her down so she could streak off after the heeler.

If the cows didn’t pay much attention to her, it wasn’t because she didn’t try. Her teeth just weren’t big enough to go through cowhide. She couldn’t move cows, so she started concentrating on the calves.

She learned to slip in and move the calf while the heeler moved the cow.

Poor Jesse. His heeler’s working partner was a poodle and they made a surprising effective team. Despite the ribbons.

Candi loved her new life, all but Jesse. His disapproval kept her head and tail down.

I hadn’t seen Jesse and Bonnie for awhile, then one day I ran into Jesse on the road between headquarters and the calving pasture. He was obviously headed to feed, and there on the seat was Candi. Complete with bows and painted toenails.

I kinda grinned and commented on his well-dressed passenger.

He looked a bit sheepish, but his voice was firm.

“Yeah, Bonnie had to go be with her dad for a couple weeks, and I had to keep Candi. Took her with me a couple days, and you won’t believe what she does!”

“What?” I asked “Keep the seat warm?”

“You just get in here and see!” he defended, calling Candi over beside him with a hand gesture.

This I had to see. Jesse defending a poodle?

I parked my pickup on a pasture access trail and climbed in.

When I opened the gate to the calving pasture, Candi bounced out of the pickup and before I could grab her, disappeared into the chollo.

As I opened my mouth to call her back, Jesse interrupted me. “Get in here, she’ll be all right.”

We bounced across the pasture to the feed grounds and he scattered cake. We counted cows and looked for sick calves. Then we unloaded a round bale of hay on the hillside where it would roll down and come apart. He didn’t seem too worried about the cow missing from the bunch, or the one that had obviously calved within the last day or so but had come to feed alone.

When the cows were fed, he parked the pickup on the hillside, shut it off and rolled down his window. The March wind whistled through the cab. He talked a bit about the quality of the calves the new bull was producing while I clamped my teeth shut so they wouldn’t chatter and quietly turned blue.

Then from the distance came a YAP! It was tiny and a long way off, but it was Candi’s yap. A few seconds later I heard it again. A dog calling for help. Alarmed I whipped my head around to look at Jesse who was calmly surveying the pasture. Finally, he started the engine and headed in the direction of the yap.

We finally found her. She was standing about fifty feet from a bunch of scruffy little trees clogged with river trash. She saw the pickup, yapped again and turned to stare intently at the trees. She turned her head back toward the pickup, then back to the trees, ribbons fluttering as her ears swung out.

Jesse stopped and climbed out. Candi ran to meet him, made sure he got the message that something important was in the trees and then took off down the draw. Jesse walked over to the trees and carefully worked his way through the deadfall.

“Bring me that 216 tag and the tagger!” he called.

Among the trees, huddled down out of the wind and carefully hidden from predators and humans, was a new calf.

As we checked the calf over, again I heard Candi yap. Just a single bark. A few seconds later, I heard it again.

“She’s found another one,” he said returning to the pickup.

And she had. The missing cow was standing over a new calf that wasn’t in any hurry to get up. Candi, standing far enough away she didn’t disturb the cow, was sending up the signal to Jesse.

“She do this all the time?” I asked, eyebrows arched.

“Every morning and every evening.” He looked at me smugly. “I used to spend hours out here trying to find stashed calves. She finds them in minutes. And she never even gets them up, just barks to let me know where they are.”

He stepped out of the pickup and called her. She came bounding out from behind the chollo separating her from the cow and ran up his coveralls into his arms. She washed his face and he tossed her through the window onto the seat. She was shivering with cold, but so obviously happy I had to smile with her.

Jesse didn’t even notice the fuzzy hair, ribbons and painted toenails any more. And that was obviously the way Candi liked it.

“You know, poodles were originally bred for stock guardians and hunting dogs,” I said as we rattled back across the pasture.

“That’s not a poodle,” he said, reaching over and ruffling Candi’s ears. “That’s a cowdog.”

Candi squirmed with joy and snuggled under his arm, eyes fixed adoringly on his face.

After that, I never saw the feed pickup without Candi. Jesse went so far as to carry her around rodeos occasionally, even if her red ribbons clashed with his shirt.

All rights reserved © 2008

Ridin’ Fence ~~ Selling community

“I can’t believe this place,” she said for about the 20th time.

By now. I’d begun to understand what she was using the phrase for, and I was learning a whole lot in a hurry about why I failed so abysmally at urban marketing. She had been invited down from the metro area to give a talk on marketing, and it was apparent after only a few minutes, that our form of “networking” was a lot different from hers. But she’s game, and she did her best to help us understand marketing from her perspective. Her mantra the evening before had been “You have thirty seconds to convince me to listen to you” and “network.”

But this morning it had changed to “I can’t believe this place.” And it wasn’t a phrase she had practiced for seminars and speaking engagements.

I heard it the first time as we walked through the Copper Kitchen toward the far back table. I’d either been hailed by, or stopped to talk to, a dozen people. She listened politely as I talked about cows and the cow market, horses and the horse market, hay and the hay market, mules, dogs, pickups, kids both two and four legged, and what this week’s column might be about. (I like I knew at that time!)

As we sat down, yet another person came up to say “Hi” and tell me they liked Life Out Here and how glad she was that I had put it together. It’s easier to store a book than a file of clippings.

“Have you read it yet?” she asked my guest.

“No,” she answered politely. “What’s it about?”

“Us!” the woman said, pressing her hands over her heart. “It’s about our community.” Then she corrected herself. “It’s really about any small town, I suppose, but it’s about us. Our community.”

As the lady returned to her table, my guest said, “I don’t believe this place,” and asked me if I knew everyone.

“Oh, no,” I replied. “We talked to most of the people I really know, but there’s not too many folks in here we couldn’t talk to.” I pointed out some of our local dignitaries and told her what I knew about them – who owns which businesses, who’s kid earned a basketball scholarship, and that sort of thing. That solved the breakfast conversation problem. On the way out, we walked the gauntlet again and talked to another half-dozen folks who’d come in since we had.

“I can’t believe you know all this about all these people!” she said.

“Well, they’re my friends and neighbors, and some of them are relatives. Of course, I know about them.”

As we started up Colorado, a friend from Kim backed away from her bank, saw me and waved merrily in the back window. I waved back.

“Who’s that?” my passenger asked.

“Neighbor,” I said.

“She lives next to you then.”

“Oh no. She lives about 75 miles from here, but if I need a hand, she comes running, and I repay the favor every chance I get.”

“Oh.”

She liked architecture, so we trundled around La Junta, looking at the older and most unique homes, and stopped to visit Sally Hibbs. Sally was a gracious host and sent us on to the Finney House. Again a warm reception and tour that included the stunning woodwork accents, light fixtures and wonderful details salvaged from the days when the Railroad sent a doctor out from New York to see to their employees.

“I can’t believe this place,” she kept repeating, but I was beginning to understand it had little to do with the house, regardless of its charm.

I pointed out other homes, and told her a little about the ones owned by people I knew. Then we looped around to look at the cobblestone house on Sixth street. That’s when she spotted the Weddell and Reed sign.

“You have a Weddell and Reed? Here?”

“Oh, yeah. Remember when all of us were talking last night and you asked how often we examined our portfolios and we said we let Karen worry about that? Well, that’s Karen, and she worries about that. If she fiddles with somebody’s investments, or people lose too much money, they talk to each other, and believe me, Karen can’t afford that, so she worries for us.”

“I can’t believe this place.”

We stopped at the Kiva and she listened as Susie talked about Buck and his dream, and the boyscouts, and the current museum collection, and the expansion plans. As we went downstairs to look at the pieces in storage, I heard it again, “I can’t believe this place.”

Back outside the Kiva, Susie was kind enough to buy a book and promise to find out if my title would fit into their bookstore. As we pulled away, headed back to her vehicle, I heard it again.

“I can’t believe this place.”

This time I called her on it. “What can’t you believe?” I asked.

“I can’t believe the people. You’ve talked to everyone from the Mayor to the janitor, and they’re all friendly. You’ve waved at business people, trucks, kids on the sidewalk, and they’ve all waved back. Nobody has honked at us, even if we’re going two miles an hour down the center of the street. People have just let us walk into their houses! I’ve never seen the private side of a museum before. And I’ve been invited back so many times I can’t remember them all. I’ve watch you sell books without even mentioning them. I just can’t believe this place!”

“Well, if they want a book, they ask. I just let them know it’s there if they want it.”

She shook her head.

“How’s that different from what you do? I know there’s got to be a difference because I can’t sell a thing in a city.”

She looked at me a bit and finally answered, “I don’t want to know you. Just tell me why I should want what you’re offering and leave me alone.”

“What? How can you sell something to somebody that you don’t know? How do I know if you’re going to like my book if I don’t visit with you long enough to know you a little bit?”

She looked back through the windshield. “You don’t. You’re selling something, not making lifelong friends. I don’t want another person in my circle, so when you come up and ask who my grandfather is (I’d asked that question in the course of our day) you’re invading my privacy and that turns me off. Keep it professional, not personal.”

My mind was in overdrive trying to figure out how I could convince urban people to buy the “community” in my book if they didn’t know what it was. Small town is all about “personal.”

Absently I waved at Mike in his patrol car while I waited to turn. He waved back.

“I can’t believe this place!” she said.

We arrived back at her vehicle, and she stepped out.

“So, are you coming back?” I asked as she opened the door of her SUV.

“Absolutely! We’ll bring the bikes down this summer. My husband has got to see this town. He’s never going to believe it. What a great place to retire!”

“Well,” I said, “Call me if you do. There’s some really neat houses out in the country you might like to see.”

She grinned and waved, but I could see her mouthing “I can’t believe this place” as she closed her door.

Well, she might not be able to believe it, and she might think things here are too personal, and that we spend too much time building bridges and not enough time minding our own business, but she sure bought it.

All rights reserved © 2008

Ridin’ Fence ~~ Mules

I have to admit to my friend who loves mules, that I am actually beginning to like that silly mule. I’m not sure she’ll ever be useful, but no critter has forced me to think faster or made me laugh harder. And I have never seen a critter with a more theatrical bent in my whole life, not even that goofy Arabian.

We knew irrigating water was coming, but as usual, we weren’t really paying attention. Too many other things were on the agenda, and the ditches weren’t in shape to run water.

Then came the announcement – water Sunday evening. With no real moisture since last August, Spring green up depends on irrigation water. Skipping a run was not an option. And to add an element of urgency, I wasn’t home Saturday, so that left Sunday afternoon to clean out the ditches, find and repair dams, finish furrowing fields, lay out gated-pipe and all those little goodies.

My husband got the tractor, skid steer and loader bucket. I got the shovel. It was a long afternoon, but by six, we were ready – kind of.

About then the water arrived in a rush of weeds, foam, trash and muck. I raced for the corral to make sure the water gap was open and took my position on the goat bridge to make sure the weeds went under instead of taking the bridge to the neighbors.

I was settling in, pitchfork poised, when I heard the first splash. My big riding mare hadn’t waited for the main push of weeds to go through before taking her spring bath. There she was, weeds collecting on her legs, throwing water everywhere with her big feet. A happier horse couldn’t be found.

Her friend the 2-year-old mule filly, however, was in a panic. Horrified to see her buddy belly deep in muddy water being attacked by all those weeds, she danced on the side of ditch, ears hard forward, calling frantically. Isit wasn’t listening. Finally, Tilly gathered up all her courage and plunged into the flood, risking her life to lead her friend to safety. She scrambled up the far bank, eyes wide.

Isit ignored her.

Incredulous, Tilly stood a minute, collected her courage again, and plunged back in. This time she even bumped into Isit’s shoulder, desperate to get Isit out of the water. Isit bit her, hard, and continued her bath. Back on the bank, Tilly nickered and called and danced until a huge wad of weeds finally forced Isit out of the ditch. Then she planted herself between Isit and the ditch and no amount of biting from Isit could drive her away. She wasn’t risking her friend in that ditch again. Poor, dumb horse, she just wasn’t smart enough to know how dangerous water could be!

I was laughing so hard, I about fell in when the fist big branch hit the bridge I was standing on. After shoveling ditches, pushing weeds under the bridge was easy. I should have been a good neighbor and forked them out, but my back was having none of that. Eventually, there were fewer weeds, and I was able to take a break. I was picking at my hands and wondering how many days it would take for all those spring blisters to turn into summer callouses when I heard horses splashing again.

I looked over and Isit was back in the water. Tilly had apparently decided Isit wasn’t in any immediate danger because she was watching quietly, ears at attention, tense, but not stressed.

Gem, the boss, was standing in the shallows, splashing her belly. Old Beauty had been patiently waiting for the weeds to go by, and she finally decided it was time for her bath too.

Standing hipshot, and attempting to appear relaxed, Tilly watched as Beauty stepped carefully into the water and worked her way over the the main part of the ditch. For a few seconds, Beauty worked her feet in the mud, obviously testing the footing and selecting just the right spot. Then, with a happy groan, she laid down. Water swirled over her rump, back and neck, almost to her ears.

Tilly’s ears shot forward so fast they made an audible slapping sound, her eyes popped wide open and she jumped a few inches into the air. An alarmed squeak escaped as she crouched, wanting to flee, but frozen in horror as her friend drowned before her very eyes.

But then Beauty stood up, shook her mane and carefully turned around in the ditch.

Tilly started breathing again, her eyes returned to normal size, and the tension was just starting to ease out of her body when Beauty laid down to rinse the other side.

Tilly reacted again, positive her friend had been eaten by some water monster. When Beauty stood up, safe and sound and started pawing water onto her tummy, Tilly took one last overwhelmed look and turned her back on the whole situation.

She came over to me and hid her face in my body. If a mule could have sobbed, she would have.

“Poor little muley girl,” I crooned, rubbing her eyes and ears. She pressed in.

My husband arrived in time to see me comforting his distraught mule.

“What’s up with her?” he asked.

“Her friends are all drowning and she can’t do anything about it.”

He looked at me, eyebrows raised.

“Just go get me a bucket of grain so we can get the horses out of the ditch before your mule has a mental breakdown.”

He arrived with the bucket and the sound of grain in the feeder brought the whole herd out of the water. Tilly watched them all hurry, dripping, to the feed, and stopped long enough to rest her chin on my shoulder a minute.

“You’re welcome,” I said, rubbing her muzzle.

She blew in my ear and hurried off to get her share of the goodies, snuggling up as close to Isit as Isit would allow.

“What was that all about?” my husband asked. “They didn’t need any grain.”

“No, but your mule now fully believes she can come to me to get her buddies rescued. I think that’s a good trade off.”

I’m not sure he believed me, but the mule does. And that’s all that counts if I have to get on her someday.

All rights reserved © 2008

Western people ~~ Lynn Allen

“My family can take an uneventful deerhunt and keep people laughing in stitches for 20 minutes …” Lynn Allen comes from a long line of storytellers, and it shows in her writing. I’ve said before that she has a striking understanding of rural people and places, so let’s find out how she meets these folks and tells their stories.

Lynn Allen

Lynn used to write high-action fiction, but a car wreck in 1993 left her with a concussion, and it somehow knocked the fiction out of her, even to this day. When she started writing more seriously again eight years ago, she needed a job that would enable her to stay on the ranch. She had the chance for a newspaper position, and it was as if God was telling her, “You can either get this job, or you can stand on your ego.” Personally, I’m glad she took the job, because I’ve seen her writing develop into a unique expression of rural life in Colorado. You can find freelance articles by Lynn in AQHA, Chicken Soup, Equus, and other ag magazines. She has won various awards, including the Society of Professional Journalists.

Lynn worked a while as an assistant editor, so she understands what an editor faces on deadline. But Lynn really didn’t want to work in the office. If you meet her, you’ll quickly understand why – she has way too much energy and independence to be tied down that way. So in 2005 she asked if she could do a column. These days Lynn is probably best known for her weekly Ridin’ Fence column. Reprints of those columns show up about twice a month here at Westinspect.blog.

I asked her, “How do you meet these interesting people?” Well, Lynn is friendly, and she “can’t keep her mouth shut.” That’s a quote from her, not me, but it’s true. She remembers people from most of her lifetime, and she loves to tell others’ stories. By the way, she neither tells a person’s story, nor quotes them, without their permission. That’s how it should be, isn’t it?

I’ve read most of her Ridin’ Fence articles, and the wolf story that was posted in July is still one of my favorites. “Why did you write that one, Lynn?” She had heard previous stories about the wolves in New Mexico, stories that touched her spirit, and she wanted to make sure she had heard right. She told me that “ranchers are ranchers because they have a heart for animals and are willing to sacrifice for that lifestyle.” On her trip to NM she saw what the wolves did that nearly destroyed one rancher’s life. “To be a writer, you have to feel it, you have to have a sensitive spirit. That column was a gut reaction, to show the fear those people have…”

So where did she pick up that spirit? Three authors have greatly influenced her: Lee Pitts, Gay Talese, and Jon Franklin. Lynn told me a large part of Franklin’s Ballad of Old Man Peters – I see how it can stir someone to keep looking ahead no matter what. And Lynn does have a vision for the future. As an author, she wants to sell more articles and make a profit. Her educational freelance articles are presented in a way that people will want to read and learn, while the Ridin’ Fence column is more personal. Lynn knows plenty of folks that she wants to write about, and she says she will go wherever God sends her to meet people and tell their stories. For me, it’s great to be able to offer Ridin’ Fence to you.

Ridin’ Fence ~~ State troopers

A new Ridin’ Fence from Lynn Allen – Enjoy!

I know you’re not supposed to take the feed truck to town, but I was out of options. That stupid red pickup was doing it’s front-end wobble again and there was no way I was putting a ton of cake on that thing and trying to drive it home. I’m not that suicidal.

The local feed store was out of the pellets my goats like (Rumor is goats eat anything. I’d sure like to find some of that kind!) so I saddled up Methuselah and headed for Lamar.

Poor old Methuselah turned over 300,000 miles before the odometer quit and that was a couple years back, and since he has retired from road work, my husband hasn’t done anything about keeping him up. He gets his oil changed and fluids checked, but that’s about it. However, he was one of the best Dodges ever made and despite the neglect, just keeps on chugging along.

We rattled and clattered our way to Lamar, suffered the jokes from the mill hands as they tossed on my load of cake and trundled back up Highway 50 toward home at about 40 miles an hour.

Just the other side of Fort Lyon, a patrol car met us. It didn’t even look for a wide spot in the road, it whipped around in two lanes and charged up behind us, lights flashing.

I eased Methuselah to the side of the road and stopped, mumbling, grumbling and wondering where I’d stuck my wallet. It was here somewhere.

An older State trooper was headed for my window, shadowed by a youngster who’s uniform looked like it should still have the tags on it somewhere.

“Driver’s license, registration and proof of insurance,” he said, as I helped the window down with one hand while pushing the button with the other.

There was a slight emphasis on the insurance bit, so I figured he was in for a surprise when I actually handed him the card proving Methuselah was insured. But first I had to find it.

I opened the glove box, dumped the B Complex, Nuflor, and Dexamethazone bottles on the seat and rummaged through exam gloves, sleeves, hardware and boluses, but I finally found it.

When I sat back up, the kid was staring with fixed attention at the syringes on the dash and the bottles on seat. He was obviously on the point. A little tense, I handed the cards over. The older guy looked them over, said “You’re insured then.” and repeated his request for my driver’s license.

I told him I had to find my wallet and started digging. The 1 cc syringes I use for B complex, oxytocin, and so on were all tangled up in the feedsack string I’d stuck in my pocket that morning, and it all came out in a wad. If possible Junior stiffened even more.

I stuffed them in a corner of the dash next to my gloves and rummaged through the cake, clips, and pocket knife in the other pocket and finally realized I’d stuck my wallet in the inside pocket. I fumbled it out and looked up just in time to see him sneak an amused peek out the corner of his eyes at the kid who was all but baying an alert.

The older guy went back to the car with my paperwork, leaving a very nervous Junior at full attention. He was so strung up, he was starting to make me nervous. The last time I saw something that uptight, I’d thrown a saddle on a horse only to discover he was proud of his ability to buck people off before they could get both feet in the sturrips. I didn’t twitch while I waited for the wonders of modern technology to prove there are no arrest warrants out on me, and that I don’t have any tickets.

He came back, eyeing his young partner’s stiff back and with a rotten little gleam in his eye and a smirk twitching his mustache said loud enough for half the county to hear, “You have a concealed weapons permit?”

Junior turned pale.

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because I carry a rifle to shoot coyotes with and when I ride rough country I take a pistol. Sometimes they get shoved behind or under the seat and that makes them concealed.”

“Getting any coyotes this year?”

“Not nearly enough.”

He handed my paperwork back. “You’re not calving, those boluses and syringes are too small. Kidding or lambing?”

“Kidding.”

“Nice weather for it.”

“Yeah. Beats last year doesn’t it?” I asked.

“Sure does.” He reared back and glanced at his partner under the pretense of surveying Methuselah. Most of our conversation was going over that kid’s head, and he wasn’t taking time to think about any of it, he was focused on syringes. “You really need to get this thing fixed up. Tyeing that front signal light in with twine isn’t exactly correct.”

“I know, but it was the best I could do at the time.”

“And this hood latch has to be fixed.” He tried to jerk it open, but it was tied down. “I guess it’s not coming open.”

“Oh no. I tied it down good. You have to cut it open with a pocketknife.”

Junior was still fixated on veterinary equipment.

“And I’m not supposed to let you go with that back window broken out. And this needs reattached.”

“The windshield doesn’t have a single crack!” I defended. “And that bumper’s been rattling like that for at least 150,000 miles.

Junior was still on the point, and the veteran kept glancing sideways at him. Finally, he had walked clear around the pickup, made me prove that all the lights actually worked – even if two of them were held in with twine, and checked that my load wasn’t going to fall off.

“I won’t tell you to slow down, you can’t go fast enough to get a speeding ticket, but don’t let anything else fall off that truck on the way home!”

“Of course not!” I replied. “I paid lots of money for that stuff, you think I’m going to let it fall off?!”

“Not the load, the parts of the pickup!”

He signaled the youngster and they started back to the car. The youngster kept glancing back and he must have said something because I heard loud and clear, “If we seized all that stuff, it would all come back livestock medicine and we’d have to buy her a whole new stock. Have you priced some of that stuff? Your salary won’t stand it. Get in the car. Not everything you see out here is drugs, and just because somebody has a gun doesn’t mean they’re going to shoot you. You’re going to have to learn to look at everything and not just focus on one potential trigger.”

He shut his door, blocked traffic and waved me out.

“Always happy to help educate the future of law enforcement,” I grumbled urging Methuselah back onto the highway. I’m sending my husband after feed from now on.

All rights reserved © 2008

Ridin’ Fence ~~ Wolves and ranchers

Lynn Allen writes with a striking understanding of rural people and places. I’ve invited her to post two of her Ridin’ Fence articles each month here at Westinspect. In a couple of weeks I’ll post an interview so you can get to know her better. And I guess we better find a photo of her, too!

I spent the week in Catron county New Mexico. Personally, I hate deserts. If I’m going to take a week long vacation, I’m going to go somewhere where God does the irrigating and I can look at something green. That’s not southern New Mexico. I also hate heat. Anything over 70 degrees qualifies as heat in my world. There’s lots of heat in southern New Mexico. I’m driving as little as possible with fuel at $4.50 a gallon. It’s 500 miles to Reserve, New Mexico.

I went because a man I respect promised he’d introduce me to the ranchers, livestock owners, and even townspeople who have been “impacted” by the New Mexico Wolf Reintroduction Project. The issue originally caught my attention when I saw an ad in the Rocky Mountain News placed by the Defenders of Wildlife. It was a cute little wolf pup rolling around in a bunch of flowers. The header asked “Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?” I wrote in saying “I am!” and included six pictures of livestock and pet remnants. My reply wasn’t printed.

Those pictures were sent to me by Laura Schneberger. Her name was on this list of people I would be able to meet if I climbed in that pickup and went to New Mexico. I did my homework (the Mexican Gray wolf is being raised mostly in pens at various breeding facilities and released into the Gila National Forest where there are complaints of them killing livestock) and I went.

I arrived on the first ranch Wednesday evening after traveling 20 miles of dirt road, 20 miles of pasture trails, and another 10 miles of cow trails. After two hours of carefully feeling me out to make sure I actually knew how many stomachs a cow has, I’ve eaten venison and that the scuffs on my boots came from spurs, I started getting the real stories.

Stories like 800 head of weanling calves in the pasture around the house being chased by the Luna pack all night every night – final tally 19 dead calves. It took 60 days to get permission from the absentee owner to ship the calves instead of holding them the full 90 days as they’ve done in the past. The calves lost 81 pounds in those two months. Total loss on that bunch of calves was over $100,000. The calves went to wheat pasture in Kansas. The new owner noted the calves were covered in bites when they arrived and more died from septicemia caused by infected wolf bites within the next few days. He’s not buying any more New Mexico cattle.

The wolves broke into the tack room inside the barn and ate a barrel full of dog food.

“It wasn’t even the good stuff, it was Ol’ Roy,” the ranch boy said. “How did wolves get a taste for Ol’ Roy?”

I wanted to know how the darn things found the tack room, and why they felt safe enough in the barn to spend the time to break down the door. But the family didn’t seem to find wolves in their barn all that new or exciting. They’d had calves killed in the barn before.

Thursday morning I watched a 16-year-old boy pick up a rifle, jack a shell into the chamber and head out the door to do chores. The barn is a stone’s throw from the house.

“Nobody goes outside without a rifle any more,” his mother said. “Daylight or dark. They used to let us have the frequencies for the radio collars on the lead wolves in the pack so we could tell when the wolves were close. But they don’t do that anymore. We don’t know where they are or when they’ll show up. And they’re not scared of people.”

When I got in the pickup to head for the next ranch, I pulled my .45 out from under the seat, jammed it between the cushions, and tossed the shells on the dash within easy reach.

The next rancher is also an outfitter. Or was, until his hunters started encountering wolves. With 40 percent of his calves dead from “unidentified predators” and hunters finding other places to hunt, he started complaining to the New Mexico Fish and Game. They admitted there was a problem and started feeding the wolves in the area. Ironically, the Diamonds couldn’t get a “confirmation” of a wolf kill, but when the carnivore logs started arriving for the wolves, the calves quit disappearing.

“Carnivore logs are horse meat,” he said. “I had it tested. No wonder those wolves are harassing my horses and mules.”

John is third generation on this piece of land and grew up ranching, hunting, fishing, and packing. His wife is pregnant with their first child. They’re considering buying a house in town so the child will be safe. But not the local town. There has been a wolf on the playground there. Soccorro, maybe. It’s a bigger town.

Schneberger’s live so far out, it takes all day and $150 in fuel to make a trip to town for groceries. The cowtrails into the first ranch were good road compared to the trail into their place. Matt’s parents bought the place in the 1960’s and he thought there was no better place in the world to grow up. Packing a gun was an option for him as a kid, now his adult daughter goes nowhere without a rifle in her saddle scabbard. His young son plays inside a wolf-proof fence.

At the recommendation of the Wolf Reintroduction Project entities, they bought longhorn cattle to replace those killed by wolves. However, that didn’t stop the killing and longhorn calves are worth less than other beef calves at market. How many pay cuts can they take?

Their daughter had been surrounded by wolves within quarter mile of the house, and still has a hard time talking about it. They have horses that go crazy every time they see a carnivore and all the riding stock is kept in the newly wolf-proofed corrals and fed. The parents flinched every time their rambunctious son yelled in the back yard. If he was quiet for more than a few minutes, somebody went to check on him.

I loaded the pistol and I jammed it between the seats before I started out of there.

The Haught’s bought a small ranch with the idea of turning it into a Christian youth camp when they retired in a few years. After loosing 60 percent of the stock (calves, cows, bulls, and horses) to wolves, they sold the land and all the improvements they’d put into it for a fraction of its previous worth. They’re just glad to get rid of it.

Preston Bates had a successful guest ranch for 23 years until wolves ate 49 percent of his calf crop, killed several expensive foals and crippled some of his yearlings and two-year-olds. Defenders of Wildlife paid him $2500 for his losses claiming he couldn’t prove it was wolves killing and eating his stock. He sold the ranch to keep from filing bankruptcy and now works for the absentee owner who bought it.

He also warned me to take my pistol with me if I had to get out of the pickup for any reason. He was changing a tire once and had one come up so close, he threw a handful of gravel in its face to give him time to get in the pickup.

I watched an old timer struggle to hold his emotions in check as he listened to a Wildlife Services guy in a uniform tell him that the bits of his 15^th dead calf was probably the result of a coyote kill, but to be careful, the San Mateo pack had moved onto his property two weeks ago and were denning.

The list went on for seven days. I saw ranch kids with the same pale complexion as city kids. I watched people who though they’d “bought a slice of heaven” say they’d take about any price that would let them get out of debt and give them gas money to move. I had a nine-year-old ask to see my gun and tell me I needed to be able to draw it quickly because if a wolf is within 30 feet, it can get you in one jump. He informed me he’d seem two wolves pull down a 1000 pound cow and that if one got ahold of me, I didn’t stand a chance. He was really glad my pistol didn’t require reloading between shots.

“If there’s a pack, they all attack at once,” he told me. “You won’t get much time to kill them. And they aren’t afraid of shots. We tried to drive them off by shooting in the air, but that doesn’t scare them at all.”

There’s little wood-and-wire cages at the bus stops for the kids to hide in.

“We’ve had kids chased and stalked, and it’s only a matter of time before somebody gets killed,” a superintendent told me.

“But nobody’s been bitten by a wolf,” I told a roomful of people later in the day. “The records say so.”

The room exchanged glances for several minutes before one of the county commissioners looked at me and said. “There was a woman killed in the pens at the breeding facility. I tried to find out if it was one of the wolves they’d picked back up after it was threatening our kids, but they wouldn’t tell me which pack did it. And we’ve had hunters and campers bitten. We’ve had them identify the animals. One even said the thing had a collar on. But after they spend a few minutes with the Fish and Game, they change their minds and say it’s a coyote. Then the state pays for the rabies shots and the medical care. We’ve had a several people out here chewed on by coyotes since this wolf program began.”

“What’s going to happen?” I asked the Catron County Wolf Interaction Investigator.

“Somebody’s going to get killed. I hope it’s a camper’s kid because if it’s one of ours . . . these people have been living with being told they can’t protect their stock, their pets, and their kids for so long that . . . . I just hope it isn’t one of our kids. You can only push people so far.”

All rights reserved © 2008