Drive - A Memoir 108th Installment
the
chickens were in. While we worked, the Old Man had rewired another
electric fencer to the highest amperage and stretched a 1/8 inch
steel cable around the inside of the corral fence. When finished we
had a twenty by twenty foot log fence with three sides built against
the cinderblock shop. We’d also run lots of water in the corral to
make the ground wet. Back at Ted’s place, we tied a third rope to
the bull and the back bumper of the pickup truck. Vernon led out
slowly, and Ted and Alfred controlled the other two ropes from their
horses on each side. We paraded home, and it took over an hour to go
a mile. It took another hour to of work and planning, but we got the
bull in its new enclosure, and as it was getting late, we turned on
the electricity. Even before we started milking the bull decided it
wanted out and charged the fence. Hitting the electric cable there
was sizzle and the smell of burnt hair. The bull’s bellow echoed
through the trees. The animal turned and hit the fence on the other
side and was shocked again. The bull made several more tries at the
pole fence getting repelled each time by the electric wire. The bull
stared at the small open window in the side of the shop. The stupid
bull went for it, and with a leap at the end of his charge, the bulls
head fit through, but the massive shoulders did not. Amazingly, the
wall cracked from the ground to the roof line, but the wall held.
Lucky for us the demented animal didn’t try again, because, I
think, in a few more wallops he could’ve knocked the block building
down. Well, that would’ve been okay. Maybe the roof would’ve
fallen on the beast and killed the bull for us.
Well
into the night we would hear the bellows as the bull tried to escape.
In the morning the exhausted animal lay in the middle of the corral,
and after that he would stay in the center, far from the wall, the
fence, and especially the wire.
A
couple weeks later the bull was loaded in a Flying “~U~” Ranch
semi-truck and was gone. Good riddance, I thought. We didn’t have
the equipment or the will to handle such a brute.
Chapter
31
“Amber
told me that they are going to have a late summer jack rabbit drive
next Saturday at Helm’s place,” Edith informed us. “Want to
go?”
“Duh,”
I said.
Saturday
Russ and I grabbed the 1938 International pickup, checked the oil,
and raced up to the Helm’s place for the jack rabbit drive. We’d
made two great clubs, a 3 ½ – foot bludgeoning club and a short
thick throwing stick. Russ and I had been to a few drives in the last
couple of years. They’d drawn a lot of people and were well
planned, netting tens of thousand jackrabbits.
500 more words tomorrow
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