A Mule Story - Post 96

Whodathunk that a sweet, gentle blog such as mine would receive an award such as the one above? My erudite and clever blogging buddy rhymeswithplague received this award back in August, and per instructions, he passed it to others, among them myself, a most unworthy recipient. But, thanks, anyway, rhymeswithplague. I've taken a long time to acknowledge my award publicly, and I apologize.

As I thought about the award's title, it called to mind an experience of my days on the farm. Our next door neighbors (if you can call almost a mile away "next door") had a huge gray mule which was used to pull whatever farming equipment needed to be pulled. Occasionally, J.D., one of the younger teenaged boys of that family, would put a bridle on the beast and ride over for a visit. As I recall, we were the only kids of their ages for about 5 miles, at least.

I once had an opportunity (I use the word jestingly) to ride this behemoth. He stood about 17 hands at the shoulder, which was about the same height I was at the time. I had to stand on a barrel in the yard to get up on his back. And, "back" it was... no saddle. Although I was tall, I was skinny. I weighed only about 90 pounds, soaking wet. The mule probably didn't even realize I was there... until I kicked him in the ribs to get him to "go."

To my remembrance, that's the only time I ever "kicked ass."

Post Script: Yes, I realize that technically this mule was not a true ass, but its donkey daddy was an ass. I suppose this mule was only half-ass.

Roosters from Hell - Post 89

I was playing catch up reading my favorite blogs Friday evening, and had my "memory cells" stirred up by the post on Musings of a Ranch Wife, a fine storyteller who lives in New Mexico. So this whole post will make a little bit of sense, I invite you to first read her post, here, then come back to read my remembrance.

Not too long after we moved to Arkansas, my daddy acquired a batch of half-grown Bantam game chickens from one of his uncles. They were pretty things, and smaller than our regular chickens. "Little Mo" was the rooster, and he was a first cousin to Ranch Wife's "rooster from hell."

(Wikipedia photo -- Little Mo didn't look quite like this; he was more colorful,

 but this was the best photo I could find)

Our farm's outhouse was on the back side of the chicken yard, and you had to go through the chicken yard to use the facilities. Little Mo would attack anything that moved, and he had spurs a that were a good inch, or more, long. All of us had a few scars on our legs from being spurred at one time or another, but usually you could shoo him off before he did much damage. One morning, he jumped my mama, wouldn't "shoo," and tore up both her legs something terrible. She came in the house crying and bloody. He had made gashes in her poor legs that must have been 6" long. That was it! Unlike Ranch Wife's hero, I had no gun (probably couldn't have hit the broad side of the barn if I had one), but my brother's baseball bat was on the back porch. I grabbed it, ran to the chicken yard with hot-blooded murder on my mind and, screaming and hollering at this wicked little bird, committed rooster-cide. I do believe that is the most angry I have ever been in my whole life. I'm not proud of murdering him, though; it left me feeling pretty sick.

I remember that Daddy wasn't too happy that I had killed his game rooster, but didn't fuss at me very much after he saw Mama's legs. Mama was in her early 50's when this event occurred, and still had faint traces of the scars on her legs when she died at age 86.