Bill's Rural Legends
Part 1 - A Midsummer Nightmare
This time of year always reminds me of why I moved to where I'm at now. Why I'm still here is another story.
Here is my story of Summer One…
From as early as I can remember I always wanted a farm full of animals; dogs as far as the eye can see, barn cats mousing all around, horses to saddle up and ride at a moment’s notice, roosters crowing at the crack of dawn... the works. Having spent the first 33 years of my life in big cities, the glamour of the farm life kept tugging at me. Thus, when a fateful chance encounter with a person, selling a refrigerator in the newspaper, led me to having the chance to finally live out my humble dream on a small seven acre ranch in Middle of Nowhere, Idaho, I naturally jumped at the chance to be a real life redneck hillbilly. I moved to my little spread in the middle of spring, and shortly thereafter I watched my dream unfold into a nightmare.
The very first week I was sitting on my front porch in my shorts, drinking a beer at about 11pm, when I heard a rustle in the tree line - a big rustle at that. Being the city slicker I was, I quickly grabbed a .22 rifle and ran outside, with my trusty 11 year old son by my side – in case I needed a human shield. With the gun locked and loaded I grabbed a flashlight and started checking for the source of the noise. I was creeping along, being all stealthy and shit, when I ran face to face into a huge cow! She mooed, and I fired (high and wide, missing her by a mile, thank God). Next thing I knew I was on the ground, while my wife and son laughed their asses off at me getting run over by a stray cow that I couldn’t shoot from three feet away.
Lesson # 1- Never stand in front of a spooked cow that you just shot at -you will get real up close and personal with a stampede with your name on it.
Anyway… I bought a couple of goats to get me started. Why goats? They were cheaper than a cow, or sheep even, and they sounded like just the ticket; great at eating up the overgrown pasture that I was looking at, and maybe also for gobbling up all the weeds surrounding the place. The goats were cool and much better than I had ever hoped. They ate weeds and they were super tame. I would let them out of the barn in the morning, and then they'd follow me to the pasture where I'd lock them in for the day. The 2nd morning I had them, I got up at the nice and early time of 6am, and moved the goats to the pasture. I shut and locked the pasture gate and headed back to the house to go back to bed. When I reawakened at my usual 10am, I walked into my living room to notice the front door standing wide open and exactly one goat standing on the coffee table eating "The Stand". The other one was chewing a huge hole on the arm of my leather recliner. Add to this the piles of goat shit all over the living room and the fact that they had destroyed the rest of my entire living room as well.
Lesson # 2 - Always double check your fences before adding livestock.
Next we added chickens. Now, I thought chicks were cute little yellow things that peeped, and almost magically, overnight, became full grown chickens. So off the to the feed store we went… $300 worth of chicks later I got home and proceeded to release a couple of hundred little fuzzy balls in the chicken coup. I filled the new feeders and the waterers and shut the door. The very next morning I go out to the chicken coup, only to find that I should have listened to the bastard chicken genius in the store, and really should have bought at least one heat lamp. Frozen dead chicks littered the floor. I quickly cleaned up the mess and high tailed back to the feed store… $300 worth of brooders and heat lamps later, I was slightly smarter, and much less richer. The remaining chicks quickly grew to be a huge pain in my ass. Those cute little fuzzy chicks shit all the time, requiring at least a daily cleaning of the brooder, or the smell would gag a maggot. The chicks quickly started to lose the fuzz and became full feathered little bastards. I started removing the biggest ones from the brooder and put them in the chicken coup instead. Every morning I'd put a couple in, and at the same time notice that I was missing at least one from the day before… all that was left was the wings. The neighbors told me that it sounded like the work of a skunk - so, off to the feed store to get a skunk trap. That evening I set the trap out and baited it with cat food, as per the good neighbor’s directions. I couldn’t sleep that night. I was excited at the prospect of going out to the trap in the morning and finding the son of a bitch that was feeding on my investment. The sun finally rose and I quickly got dressed, grabbed the gun and ran to the trap to finish the bastard off.
To make a long story short:
Day 1- Trapped my cat, and the skunks got another couple of chicks.
Day 2 - Trapped my other cat, and the skunks continued to eat my young chickens.
Day 3 - Finally! Success! A skunk was in the trap!
As I grabbed the .22, my son also grabbed his bb rifle, and together we set out to kill the stinking vermin. I slowly snuck up on the piece of shit chicken stealing bastard, took aim and shot the fucker straight between the eyes! I stepped up to the body to admire my handy work, when my wonderful son let loose with a volley of bb's - straight into the sack that carries the famous skunk odor (some fucking gland, I guess) – with the spraying of my pants, shoes, and socks as result.
Lesson 3 - Always teach your kids gun safety, before allowing them to shoot anywhere near you - or anywhere near a skunk.
With the remaining chicks now grown and free from roaming death, things were looking up. We were getting a couple of dozen of eggs a week, most of the roosters were in the freezer, the goat herd had increased from 2 to 10 heads and the fences were holding tight. The wife decided that we needed to plant a giant garden, because we could, and she picked out a huge plot and told me we needed to get a tiller. After much searching I found out that the preacher of the church my wife attended had one, and was willing to lend it to me for a couple of days. The big day arrived and the Pastor showed up with the tiller in the bed of his truck. He told me we needed to find some planks, or something, to use as a ramp.
After going through the old wood pile for as while, searching for usable wood, and two spider bites later (sub-lesson A: Never go through an old wood pile bare handed), we found a couple of usable planks. All we had to do was pulling a couple of nails out. I grabbed the plank, leaned it up against a barn wall and pulled a couple of nails out with no problem. I grabbed the final nail with the claw of the hammer and gave it a great yank. The board snapped like a twig and the top half slapped me right above the eyebrow. I saw stars. I was knocked fucking stupid and felt a hot, wet sensation all over my face. I stumbled around like a drunkard, trying to get my head together, and I could hear the preacher puking in the background somewhere. I still wasn’t quite sure what was going on. Now, as a professional wrestler I have been hit in the head more times in than I can remember; steel chairs, tables, and even a football helmet, and nothing had ever rocked me like this. Finally the preacher grabbed my shoulders and told me he thought I needed medical attention, as my head had apparently sprung a leak with my entire face covered in blood. Since I married an RN for events exactly such as these, I headed in to the house with the preacher in tow, directing me to the right way through the door. After a quick wife-endorsed exam it was off to the ER. A CAT scan, five internal stitches and eight external stitches later, I finally got to go home. In addition to all the stitches I also had a huge concussion (my 5th and, hands down, absolutely worst one).
Now for those of you that don’t live in the West, I have to explain a little here. Water isn’t in a huge supply, and when you’re allowed to use it for irrigation you do it. So, this was my day to flood/irrigate the pastures. In my concussed state I walked to the head gate, opened it, walked home and just passed out. Now, with a four acre pasture, 4 hours with the head gate to the canal wide open make for an excellent job, flooding just the perfect amount. But thanks to the concussion I left it open for about 12 hours. I was woken up by a screaming wife, howling about how I had fucked up everything. I crawled outta bed and made it outside to see what the hell was going on. I had created a lake where my farm used to be. I had flooded everything; the pasture, the barn, the corrals, the garden, the front yard, the back yard, the basement of the house, the driveway - and last but not least… the chicken coup.
And it was when I arrived to the flooded chicken coup I discovered the biggest lesson of all for Summer One:
Lesson 4 - Chickens don't swim. Neither do they float, nor are they smart enough to get to higher ground.
End result Summer One: Two live chickens, and a slightly smarter Bill.
To be continued…
by
Barbed Wire Bill
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What is this, 1967?
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