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That’s a fact Jack
Pokin' Fun
Doc Blakely
Did you know you can lead a cow upstairs but not down the stairs?
I feel compelled to share this information in case you ever decide to put a cow upstairs and expect to get her back down.
Did you ever wonder why a cow won’t walk over a cattle guard?
And why don’t they back off, get a good run at it and jump over it? … Because they are afraid of heights and depths, and widths, but will stand in the middle of a railroad track and look at an oncoming locomotive doing 80 mph without the least concern.
Go figure.
I was working cattle as a teenager with Gus, who had a 40,000-acre spread in Southwest Texas.
This was dry country. A cow had to have three things to survive on the sparse vegetation: an 18-inch mouth, two pairs of roller skates and a grazing speed of 15 miles an hour. Gus had about 200 head of cows on this place, all of them Brahman, horned and as dangerous as a Navy Seal in a Pakastani compound.
Most of the calves had never seen a man or a horse. After they got used to man on a horse and settled down a bit, they went berserk when we got off the horses.
It was like a lizard that throws his tail off; they don’t see too many animals that come apart like that.
We were shipping cattle, and here’s where the stairway comes into the story. The chute ran upwards at a pretty steep angle to reach the entrance to the big 16-wheeler.
Once the yearlings reached the top, they were leery of coming back down, so they stayed put until “motivated” to descend at the destination.
Gus had a son, Bubba, about 10 and as green as a gourd.
He kept yelling, “Bubba, stay away from their rear end. They’ll kick you into next Tuesday.”
Of course Bubba thought he was immortal, so he never paid the least bit of attention.
“Bubba, watch out, she’ll kick you!”
This had gone on all day. We had all but the last heifer up the chute, a wild-eyed demon that breathed diesel fumes and snorted fire.
She was halfway up the chute when she started back down, backwards. She obviously knew the rule about not coming down frontwards.
I was frozen in time, and Bubba was safely to the side when Gus broke his own rule, ran up behind the heifer and slapped her rump, not with a stick but with his hand.
She kicked him with both hind feet, like a mule, square in the chest.
I never saw a man fall so hard so fast. He never quivered or moved a muscle and looked graveyard dead, eyes closed, motionless.
The heifer then went back up the chute into the truck and left me and Bubba with a dead man.
We leaned over his body to check for any sign of a pulse when all of a sudden Gus’s eyes popped open; he sat upright, and yelled at Bubba, “Now, you see what I’ve been telling you!”
Bubba learned his lesson well. He inherited the ranch, struck oil and moved to Paris. That’s up north of Sulfur Springs.
Doc Blakely is a humorist and motivational speaker who resides in Wharton.
Did you know you can lead a cow upstairs but not down the stairs?
I feel compelled to share this information in case you ever decide to put a cow upstairs and expect to get her back down.
Did you ever wonder why a cow won’t walk over a cattle guard?
Go figure.
I was working cattle as a teenager with Gus, who had a 40,000-acre spread in Southwest Texas.
This was dry country. A cow had to have three things to survive on the sparse vegetation: an 18-inch mouth, two pairs of roller skates and a grazing speed of 15 miles an hour. Gus had about 200 head of cows on this place, all of them Brahman, horned and as dangerous as a Navy Seal in a Pakastani compound.
Most of the calves had never seen a man or a horse. After they got used to man on a horse and settled down a bit, they went berserk when we got off the horses.
It was like a lizard that throws his tail off; they don’t see too many animals that come apart like that.
We were shipping cattle, and here’s where the stairway comes into the story. The chute ran upwards at a pretty steep angle to reach the entrance to the big 16-wheeler.
Once the yearlings reached the top, they were leery of coming back down, so they stayed put until “motivated” to descend at the destination.
Gus had a son, Bubba, about 10 and as green as a gourd.
He kept yelling, “Bubba, stay away from their rear end. They’ll kick you into next Tuesday.”
Of course Bubba thought he was immortal, so he never paid the least bit of attention.
“Bubba, watch out, she’ll kick you!”
This had gone on all day. We had all but the last heifer up the chute, a wild-eyed demon that breathed diesel fumes and snorted fire.
She was halfway up the chute when she started back down, backwards. She obviously knew the rule about not coming down frontwards.
I was frozen in time, and Bubba was safely to the side when Gus broke his own rule, ran up behind the heifer and slapped her rump, not with a stick but with his hand.
She kicked him with both hind feet, like a mule, square in the chest.
I never saw a man fall so hard so fast. He never quivered or moved a muscle and looked graveyard dead, eyes closed, motionless.
The heifer then went back up the chute into the truck and left me and Bubba with a dead man.
We leaned over his body to check for any sign of a pulse when all of a sudden Gus’s eyes popped open; he sat upright, and yelled at Bubba, “Now, you see what I’ve been telling you!”
Bubba learned his lesson well. He inherited the ranch, struck oil and moved to Paris. That’s up north of Sulfur Springs.
Doc Blakely is a humorist and motivational speaker who resides in Wharton.
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