Nov 10, 2008

Local Rancher Shocked To Discover Long Forgotten ‘Hillbilly Herd” In Distant 'Holler' At Far End Of Ranch

An area rancher made a disturbing discovery late Tuesday as he was exploring the long forgotten and largely inaccessible “Moonshine Creek’ (pronounced ‘crick’) portion of his sprawling 2000-acre ranch on the edge of the Palouse. The rancher, searching for a lost dog at the insistence of his daughter, Mabel, age 8, decided to venture into a forbidding and largely unproductive corner of the ranch in the hopes that the dog, never the smartest one in the litter, might have chased a rabbit back there and was too stupid or lazy to find its way back.

“Well, I was back there looking for that stupid, lazy, good-for-nothing dog when all of a sudden I saw strange, unnatural cattle signs – you know – strangely shaped hoof prints and bizarre, circular cow trails. Then, over the wind, I was just able to pick up the subtle ‘mooing’ that sounded eerily like the 'rebel yell'” said the mortified rancher. “Needless to say, the hair stood up on the back of my neck – and it was like I was transported to a Palouse version of the movie 'Deliverance'. That was just plain creepy” he shuddered.

“The only way I can figure it happened was that time my dad lost those cows back in the blizzard of ’46. We just assumed they got lost in the drifts – never to be seen again. Who would have guessed that they would have developed an entire bovine subculture based on close inter-breeding, twangy, annoying mooing melodies and illegal, homemade silage? Now I can see why a good, solid ‘bull rotation” is essential for the health and welfare of any herd” he said stoically. "I am just thankful that the price of beef jerky is so high so that it is not a total loss" he said optimistically. “And I should have known that lazy dog was off sleeping behind the hay bales in the barn and didn’t have the sense to wake up and come get supper. I’m beginning to wonder if that dog is a victim of careless breeding, too!!”

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

He could have saved himself a whole heap of time if only he'd listened to the King: "You ain't nothin' but a hound dog ... You ain't never caught a rabbit and you ain't no friend of mine."

The cows try to make their own "Merry Moo-lodies" but end up in ca-cow-phony instead. (No, that doesn't refer to a fake heifer from Cow-lifornia - gender reassignment surgery does not extend to the cattle population - or does it? Wow that's deep water; cold too!)

It's just as well he turned his cows into beef jerky; his idea of "bull rotation" was to keep turning the bull around. Pretty soon the poor bull just gets dizzy and falls over.

That's ok. At least the Palouse ranching culture still has purity of virtue. In Cow-lifornia, they have a completely different meaning for the term "jerk meat".