Sunday, February 26, 2017

Baxter Black: Gimp

I was out in the driveway scattering stove ash when I heard the geese. It was three days until the end of the season and I was still zero for 6. They rose from the field to the north, squawking raucously and aimed straight over the house.

I dropped the coal bucket in the snow and raced back in the front door! I careened off the furniture like a bad billiard shot! At the back door I grabbed the big twelve gauge leaned against the wall and three shells that I had conveniently placed on the top of the window ledge. Crashing off the back porch, I loaded the gun with the relaxed ease of a 13 year old on his first date! The geese beat the air above me as I swung the shotgun skyward. Boom! Boom! The geese sailed over the barn like a giant manta ray. Nary a feather fluttered to the ground but my two horses thundered from the barn!

I was in a funk that evening when I went to feed. But I noticed that my new rope horse was packin' his right hind. After a thorough lameness exam I concluded he musta slid on the ice and pulled a muscle. Possibly, I admitted, the result of a sudden fright.

Join the club. My old dog was favoring his left front. Considering his long history of bein' shot and run over, I wasn't surprised.

The cat Lefty, got stepped on a couple years ago and the Doc amputated her right hind.

Adding my bilateral bursitis, Pablo's bad back and my teenager's loss of memory, my place looks like a World War I field hospital. It's a hazard of country life.

My friend Charlie has a cowdog named Gimp. He has established a breeding program and now has produced a litter of pups that all limp. He wrote me of his success predicting that he will make a million selling them to cowmen. His theory is that it will save an enormous amount of time getting a cowdog to the bum leg-ged stage.


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