So Many S.O.B.s

"He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it."

--Melville

"We're going to St. Onge! Ellen wants to treat her bulls!" With such words did I awake this morning. I was up and out the door by 7:30, with the promise (ha!) that we'd be done working cows by noon. Nothing surrounding Ellen is on time. It's not necessarily her fault; her husband died a few years back, and she's got all kinds of people who want to give her advice on how to run the ranch. She usually steps back and lets them walk on her--her family members included. She has ideas and could probably do okay, but there are often way too many cooks in that kitchen. Such was the case today.

One of those cooks was an old fart, the first SOB of the day. I later found out that he was the same guy who called my dad up a few days ago and told him how to run his haying operation. Oh, that pissed me off. We have one of the best operations with the best equipment out there, and he was saying how "I've never used that DynaCure, you don't need that! You don't need to rake hay! Here's how you wipe your butt while I'm at it!" What a SOB. The kind who always knows what's best, but who's too old and stubborn for anyone to try to tell him otherwise. Since I'll never see him again, I was tempted to just let him have it. But it wasn't a fight worth fighting. Besides, the old SOB's wife has Alzheimer's, and she was along for the ride. Since one of my grandmothers had it, I decided to take pity rather than get angry. I don't envy what he has to deal with there. She stayed in the pickup all morning.

We weren't working cows at Ellen's house; we were hauling in panels and a head-catch into a part of her ranch called "Stinkin' Water," which is apparently the creek that runs through it. It is so far in the middle of nowhere, it's not even funny. At the center of the above link, this is the only sign of civilization you'll see--other than fence lines--for several miles in any direction:



Including roads, they don't believe in those.

We were to work two of her three bulls: one with pink-eye and the other with hoof-rot. I don't know much about either, except that the first makes cows blind and the second makes them limp. For animals whose primary job this time of year is to have sex, neither of those impediments is a good thing. We found the bulls, along with another cow with hoof-rot, and started pushing them toward the corrals we'd set up. We let the rest of the herd drop back and, in retrospect, that was our major mistake. One bull decided to jump the fence, and the chase was on--the second SOB of the day.

Ironically, it was the bull with a bad foot that took off, and we soon found that he could run on it quite well. I thought we could fatigue him into submission, but chasing a bull out there is not like chasing cattle anywhere else; the shrubbery provides all too ample cover for them to hide. They can be right in front of you and not see them. I was swerving and ducking and brushing my way through trees and brush trying to keep up with this bull on my 4-wheeler for over an hour. As the youngest person there, it was my honorary position to have the worst 4-wheeler and the point position on chasing the bull. It was probably for the best; I probably couldn't have gotten the bigger 4-wheelers into some of the places I took the little one. We got him out in the clear after about an hour of chasing, but then he made straight for the stock dam--an old goddam motherfraking trick cows learn:



Fuck you, bull.

I was going to chase it in the water, but my father, a somewhat more convincing Starbuck to my Ahab, said not to bother. We got the other cow and bull--and later another cow and calf--in the corral and treated them. The other bull must have repented of his wickedness in the cleansing dam-waters of cow-baptism, but I'll need to see him amend his ways before I am convinced of the sincerity of his repentance. I think he was just following the herd.

After we got out of there, Ellen took us to the third S.O.B.:



It's pretty dive-y, at least it would be at night. I remember stories about them having to work hard to keep business there when a second bar opened up in St. Onge a few years back. I don't know if the other one's still around.

We went home and immediately went back out to the field to finish baling some hay I'd cut a few days back. It was still a little more wet than it should have been (mid 20% moisture readings), but we figured it was better to have it mold a little than get rained on again tomorrow.

We got a call from a neighbor who had just bought a new baler and needed some help putting up about 50 acres that evening. We obliged him and were out till after 9 pm finishing up. I had to keep ahead of two balers with the rakes, which is a tall order, but one of the balers' twine--net wrap--was in backwards and it took them a good hour to figure out what the hell was wrong. I ended up raking most of it, and then jumping on the working baler and baling most of the rest of the field while they tried to fix the other one. What a mess.

At least there weren't any SOB's at the end of the day. In fact, the owners of the land we cut came out to the field and gave us all beers. I was amazed that I'd never realized that there can't be any laws about what you can and can't drink on a tractor in a field. I've seen it done before, but I think this was the first time I was drinking beer and haying at the same time. After this day, I needed it. Happiness is a beer, a smooth-riding tractor, hay, a sunset, and a .22 in the cab for some reason, keeping me company and American.