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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