Category Archives: Stories

Damage from Wild Hogs

Philosophy, Stories

“If you eat, you’re involved with agriculture” –bumper sticker

This week Sally and I were “riding circle” checking the pastures, and “the girls”, our corriente cows. Our dogs were trailing along with us, Wolf the big white Akbash, Carl, the Heinz 57, who is our singing, talking dog who looks for all the world like a mini Rottweiler, Tia, the professional cow dog (leopard/black mouth Cur), and the pups Lucy and Buckshot. We had pretty much finished when I heard the “pack” bay up something. When they finally worked out of the woods, they had a young black feral boar hog on the run. Pandemonium reigned. We watched in awe as four dogs stopped the pig, which I guess at around two hundred pounds or a little less. He spun and fought as they jumped out of the way, then they went back to work on his hide. Finally after about 10 minutes he got away, but not before he tusked little Carl pretty badly on one leg.Animal rights folks may have a problem with hunting feral hogs, but let me share a few facts with you. This is an animal that does an excess of fifty million dollars of agricultural damage a year in Texas alone. The sow is sexually mature at age six months, and can produce two to three litters of from four to eight pigs per year (or as my friend says, “litter of eight and all 10 of them live!!”) Estimates by wildlife specialists are that it would require harvesting over sixty percent per year to maintain a stable population (every county in Texas has them,) and we are only succeeding in taking out twenty eight percent!

The Term Paper

Stories

As a teenager in College Station, Texas I had been given an assignment in one of my high school classes to write a “term paper” as they were called. I chose to study the life and art of the Spanish painter named Velazquez. I was thrilled to be able to put horses and art together. However, the paintings that I saw did not depict an equine that resembled the quarter horses in my day to day experience in Brazos County. Those arched necks and long wavy manes and extremely collected postures were quite different from our modern cow ponies. Years later I ran across pictures and writing of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, with their Lippizaner horses. There they were again, the Velasquez horses. So when we began to study Spanish and Portuguese horses as a part of our journey with the Texas Ladies Aside, it wasn’t long before we found ourselves also studying classical dressage and seeking out Andalusian horses in the US of A.

I even discovered that there is a cowboy school of horsemanship in Spain, the Doma Vaquera. Now, I was in hog heaven! Well, as you can easily imagine, we are now involved with breed shows, and we own a stallion and mares, and we are beginning to use Andalusian (Spanish) and Lusitano ( Portuguese) horses for ranch work. After more than a millennium of breeding for livestock work and bullfighting it sort of makes sense that they are yet another terrific ranch working horse! Even if they do look funny to those of us who grew up with quarter horses. Actually. I’m starting to get used to how they look– ‘cause, “pretty is, as pretty DOES!”

Keep Yer Friends Closer

Stories

Many years ago my old neighbor Andrew decided to run for County sheriff. He did all the usual elbow Rubbin’ and palm greasing and pressing flesh (handshaking). He even painted a few signs and put them up at prominent crossroads. Unfortunately, while he was a pretty sharp fellow, and knew the county way better than most, he had a few flaws, as do we all. Moreover, His opponent was very popular, and had strong financial backing. Well, election day came, and folks came to town, some in cars and pick up trucks, even a few still driving mules to farm wagons and gigs. The next day when all the smoke cleared and the votes were tallied up, my friend had only two votes. Probably one was his and the other was his wife’s! that morning he sauntered into the café at the corner of the two Highway intersection, locally known as “the Y “, and ordered his breakfast. One of the locals sitting there nursing his coffee looked him over and commented “Andrew I see you’re packing iron (carrying a pistol in a holster) don’t you know you lost the election? You’re not the sheriff! Andrew slowly turned around, looked over the rims of his glasses and remarked “I seen the election results. I figured any son of a gun that ain’t got any more friends than I got, damn well BETTER carry a gun! “

Giving Directions Country Style

Philosophy, Stories

There is a well-known old Louisiana Hayride routine that goes something like this. Tourist asks hillbilly, “how do I get to Little Rock? “After a series of “smart” answers Mr. tourist says, “you don’t know much, do you.” Whereupon the former retorts “I know I ain’t lost!” Country folks often have interesting if not peculiar ways of giving directions. We were in Louisiana some years back, looking for a friend’s horse operation. The “local” said “Go down to the Dummyline Road, turn right on the Chicken Farm road and it’s the first lane on your right.” None of the roads had signs with these names on them, you were just supposed to know, the local folks all did! Then there’s the Texas style “you go down this road about a mile and a half (it’s actually four) (and it feels like ten if you’ve never been there) and when you get to the end of the oil top (That’s pavement) there’s a white house with a red roof, where the black dog used to be. Well, you don’t turn there… ” Or, “at the fork in the road take the more used one, not the one with the grass down the middle.”

Where most folks would use terms like almost or approximately, In the country you hear “Purt nat but not plumb,” “purt’n’ly”, “near about” and “Plum Nelly”. But the all-time champion was the fella who said “go down the highway to the Red Hollow Road and take a left. No, that don’t work. OK, go down Frenstat road to 127 and turn… No, that don’t work neither.”

He paused and thought for a minute, then said, 

“Well, you just can’t get there from here!”