Tag Archives: Relationships

Don’t Call an Angry Jersey Bull a Sick Cow

Posted on September 7, 2011 by | 16 comments

He won’t like it.


  Every spring and fall the lady friend I mentioned in So Long, and Thanks for all The Valentines entry and I used to go adventuring down the Rio Grande to the wildlife refuges.  We’d watch the antics of the full quota of migrating birds at Bosque del Apache  Wildlife Refuge near San Antonio, NM  [ http://friendsofthebosque.org/aboutrefuge.html ] and other sites near the river.  We carried our cameras and binoculars along, same as everyone else, and let where the birds were tell us where it was okay to go.

One year we were scouting the roads and farms on the east side of the river when we spotted a huge flock of cranes grazing among a dairy herd.  No signs forbidding trespassing, so I followed the irrigation ditch bank to get us as near them as possible.  Then we got out of the truck and began threading our way through the cows as we tried to get close enough for good pictures while the birds tried to foil the effort by moving further away.

The cattle were contained by an electric fence positioned about 18 inches off the ground.  The lady and I got separate by about 40 yards, me trying to be sneaky and circle around the cranes, her a few feet away from the cattle but on the side of the fence opposite them.

“Jules! There’s something wrong with that cow.”  I was focused on the cranes and didn’t pay her any mind.  I didn’t care if there was something wrong with one of the cows.  “Jules! That cow is SICK.”

This happened several times, me still ignoring it, her becoming increasingly shrill.  Finally, frustrated, I glanced toward her.  SHEEZE!

A huge Jersey bull was snorting and pawing up a dust cloud fifteen feet across that single strand of electric wire from her, telling her to “QUIT CALLING ME A COW!”

I yanked off my mackinaw.  “THAT IS NOT A COW.  STAND STILL!  DON’T SAY ANYTHING ELSE!  DON’T MOVE!”  I waved the mackinaw in the air.  “HYAAAAH!  HAYAAAH LOOKEE HERE YOU BASTARD!”

Snort.  Stomp.  Paw.  Dust.  Now he’s turning my way and I ain’t even across the fence from him.  “Hyahhhh!”  Less enthusiasm.

To her:  “Back away slowly.  REALLY slow.  Hyahhhh!”  Me backing away too, still waving the mackinaw, stepping across the fence, him taking a few paces toward me.  “HEAD TO THE TRUCK!  Slowwwww and easy.  Don’t attract his attention again.”  SOB’s thinking he’ll charge me, moving my way stomping and snorting, pawing up dirt.

I got up on the ditch road thinking how I can jump into seven, eight feet of water if I need to without ruining the camera and binocs.  He’s maybe 40 feet away, still coming.  She’s beside the truck.  “OKAY!  START YELLING AND WAVING YOUR ARMS AROUND, THEN IF HE TURNS GET IN THE TRUCK!”

She did, he did, and I did.  He never came past the fence.

When I was a kid a Jersey bull was universally known to be a dangerous beastie.  We had to sit through films at school telling us to watch out for them.  I read somewhere once that more kids on farms were killed by Jersey bulls than died any other way.  She sat through the same films.

I suppose she forgot.

Or maybe I was just more tuned in because of a Jersey milk cow who used to chase me all over the barnyard, me trying to get her into the stall for milking.  My step-dad always sneered at me about that, “All you have to do is grab that ring in her nose!  She won’t do anything after that.”

I don’t recall I ever got close enough to grab that ring and test it out.  I preferred batting her across the nose with a broken hoe handle.

When It’s Mushroom Picking Time in Minnesota http://teresaevangeline.blogspot.com/2011/09/when-its-mushroom-picking-time-in.html reminded me of this.  Rather than bog down her comments with my yarns I figured I’d best post it here if I wanted to tell it.

Old Jules

Johnny Cash -the Bull Rider
http://youtu.be/TViGS1ePGp8

6:15 AM Newsflash:

Last night I heard a ruckus outside the back window along with the sound of destruction.  I shined a flashlight through the screen and found a feral sow and 5-6 piglets about the size of Cocker Spaniels had broken into the rooster pen and were tearing everything up, one trying to get up the chute to the night rooster fortress.

I got the .22 and picked a target, the one tearing up my chute, fired through the screen, resulting in more destruction of the pen, a squealing, flopping-all-over-the-place pig, herd stampede by the others, and one ANGRY feral sow.

She’s been out there all night snorting and grunting.  My guess is that piglet’s still alive out there, injured, and she’s waiting until I come out to express her displeasure.

I’m not going outdoors until it’s light enough to see what I’m doing and she’s doing so’s we can come to some sort of permanent understanding about the issues involved.

Old Jules

7:30 AM aftermath

Judging from appearances she and the pigs ate the one I shot during the night.  Stinks something awful all over back there.  They did a lot of damage to the rooster pen, which I’ll have to shore up today while the two roosters run loose and hopefully leave The Great Speckled Bird: Respecting our Betters alone.

The Liar: The Great Speckled Bird, Part 2 might have to hang off in the background today, leaving the hens alone.

Damage from the hogs wasn’t restricted to the chicken pen.  They tore off some of the siding to the storage building trying to get to the chicken feed, also, broke pieces off.  More repairing and shoring up necessary there.

When I went out the sow was in a cedar thicket near the main henhouse where I could hear, but couldn’t see her.  Couldn’t tell whether the pigs were in there, too, or not.  I agreed not to go in after and she agreed to not come out after me.

Old Jules

16 Comments

Posted in 1990's, Adventure, Country Life, Education, Human Behavior, NM, Wildlife

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Weekend Note from Admin.

Posted on September 3, 2011 by | 6 comments

Labor Day weekend greetings from Admin:

I thought since it’s a holiday weekend, most people will be out and away from their computers, and  it might be a  good time for  me to  insert a couple of comments about the blog.

First, an apology to the subscribers who have on at least two occasions received notice that a new post had been published, and then found that it was unavailable. I take responsibility for that mistake–when I’m proofreading,  I sometimes get so distracted with Old Jules’ scintillating wit that on occasion I hit “publish” instead of “preview” or “save draft”.  You’d think that someone in charge of the details  would be more careful, especially after the first time, but… it happened again today.  So, I’m sorry for the carelessness.

Second, Facebook users might want to know that So Far From Heaven: Old Jules has a Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/So-Far-From-Heaven-Old-Jules/123855484372872 in spite of the fact that Old Jules himself doesn’t have a fast enough connection to view it.

I’m posting a feature called “Ask Old Jules. ” On an irregular basis, I put up previous material from Old Jules in a question/answer format, and you’re welcome to post questions on the wall as well.  When a question is posted, I forward it to him and post the reply when I receive it.

As usual, if anyone has a comment or suggestion about the blog’s appearance or features, you are welcome to email me at the address found on the Admin. page on the navigation bar.

The above image is one of my gel pen drawings. It’s what I do when I’m not  working or laughing at Old Jules’ stories.

Have a good holiday weekend!
Mandala56

Ozark Mountain Daredevils – You Made It Right live 1976

http://youtu.be/k8NPdyVw5XE

6 Comments

Posted in 2011, Adventure, Internet, Relationships

Tagged , , ,

So Long, and Thanks for all the Valentines

Posted on August 16, 2011 by | 19 comments


During the early 1990s I had a lady friend with whom I was close enough to
exclusively share a few years of my life.  Interior decorator lady who grew up in the same town and entirely different social strata than I did.

I first remember noticing her in the fifth grade, and from then until the time I left that burg as a high-schooler, I don’t believe she ever spoke to me.  She was upper crust and I was somewhere down there below the lower crust.

Anyway, 30-35 years later we spent a few years together seeing one another every day and night.  She had a lot of strong points, beautiful woman, smart, and well-intentioned.  I’d mentioned to her once that it used to really hurt my feelings in school on Valentine’s Day.  I hated it, all those kids getting valentines from one another and I didn’t get any.

Valentine’s Day, maybe 1993, ’94, I headed down to her house after work.  Came in the door and fell over.   She’d decorated the house with valentines, fed me a piece of cake shaped like a valentine, and handed me a box shaped like a valentine wrapped. Made me open it.

Crazy woman had filled that box with old-timey valentines like were around when we were kids…… full, chock full, that box was, with valentines claiming to be from kids we went to school with, all addressed to the kid I used to be …… the lower-class scum of yesteryear. Crazy stuff.

I’ve cried maybe twice during my adulthood, but for some reason I was having to hold back tears on that one. But that isn’t why I’m writing this blog entry.  I just wanted to preface the next thing with that one, so you’d understand she wasn’t a bad person underneath everything.

Anyway, she had two habits I found particularly irritating, aside from being miserable and liking to spread it around, toward the end of our relationship. She pronounced the “G” in guacamole. “Gwakamohlee.”  Drove me nuts.  Knew better, but maybe couldn’t remember, maybe didn’t care.

Secondly, she had this thing I figure came from being upper- crust as a kid.

“You find someone to work on the roof?” I might ask.

“Oh yes,” she might warble. ” Hired this little Mexican man.”

When I see the guy, he ain’t little.  He’s 240 pounds.  But he is Hispanic.

“Oh!” she might say.  “I hired this little Indian woman to do some bead work for me.”  Turned out the little Indian woman was taller than she was and weighed in heavier than the roof repair man.

You get the picture. Non-Anglo-Saxons were little, particularly if they were hired to do something.

No, the lady wasn’t a bigot, precisely.  She wouldn’t sit still for racial slurs unless they were subtle, oblique, or less so, but about Navajo folks, whom she generally disliked.  She conveyed the impression instead, that she found little men who did repairs to the plumbing so cute, so lovable, so adorable and quaint.  Something akin to looking through the big end of a telescope at them standing there so tiny doing their assigned jobs.

When we parted company after a few years it wasn’t pleasant, but I learned a lot about myself from her, once she began explaining what all was wrong with me.  It was worth a lengthy listen because she probably knew me as well as anyone ever has.

After I decided it was over I continued talking to her every night on the telephone for about a month, an hour-or-so per night, determined to listen carefully and consider everything ugly she could think of to say about me without any argument.  She mightn’t be right, or she might be right but about something I didn’t want to change, or she might be right and I might want to change it.

But we don’t get many opportunities in this life to have someone who knows us well go into loving detail explaining every flaw and wart, everything we haven’t noticed  about ourselves.  There aren’t any little people a person could hire to do that.

Eventually I came to realize she was enjoying those protracted nightly diatribes more than was possibly good for her.  She’d begun repeating herself, also.  So I told her it was over.

I mostly remember her for the valentine side.  The going up big was worth the coming down little.

Old Jules

P.S.  For you bloggers, a note from Jeanne (Admin):

Click here for a chance to win a slot in The Bloggess sidebar for a month sponsored by freefringes.com
http://freefringes.com/2011/09/20/lovelinks-24-open/

P.P.S. Another note from Jeanne (Admin):
We’re getting a few new readers from the contest site who are probably confused about my linking  to some old guy’s blog… so I wanted to mention that I’m a background partner on this blog and no, I didn’t write most of these posts!  I didn’t really understand the submission forms, so the blog is listed under “Jeanne Kasten”. I don’t know why. Sorry for any confusion!

Paul Simon– Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes

19 Comments

Posted in 1990's, Communication, Ethnic Supremacy, Human Behavior, Native Americans, NM, Portales, Relationships, Youth

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Old Man, Young Man, on a Mountain Top

Posted on August 11, 2011 by | 5 comments

I got an email from a young man who’d been reading my blog and was astute enough to notice I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life and didn’t appear to have a corresponding level of grief and regret. He asked me a number of personal questions regarding all that. I answered most of his questions, but the email reminded me of the following, which I wrote a few years ago.
Old Man and Young Man
On a Mountain-top

Old man and young man
Sit, gaze at far reaches
Of valley and desert
Spanning to horizon

“How’d I get to be this old?”
Old man smiles, serene
“I wonder sometimes myself”

Young man: “I’m serious”
Old man sighs and leans
Against a rock.

“You’ve already
Heard the parts about
Cheating, lying, and
Stealing all your life.
Those can shorten things
Considerable.
Could have mine.

Those are things you need to
Keep in moderation.”

Young man frowns.
“You’re joking.”

“No. Just being
Completely honest
For once.
But those are more
Likely just to ruin
Your life than
To end it.”

Tosses a flat rock
Into the void
Eyes follow
The long descent
“I never killed myself
When I wanted to.
Never threw myself
On my sword over
Defeats I can’t recall now.
Never flang myself
Off a cliff over scores of women
I no longer remember.”

Old man digs his pocket
Pats his other pockets
Looking for his pipe.
“I never gloated sufficiently
On my amazing successes
Over the efforts of others
(Those escape my mind
These days)
To make anyone want
To kill me enough to
Actually do it.”

Tamps the pipe
Frets with a match

“I was astute enough
To recognize early
When you bed
Another man’s woman
She’ll eventually tell him.
She mightn’t say who,
But she’ll always say what
And if he’s smart
He’ll puzzle out who.
That’s a worthy thing
To keep in mind.”

Pipe bowl sparked
Glowed, smoke
Curled around him

“I’ve always lived hard
Pushed the envelope
Hung it out over the edge.
I’d rather have died early
Than not done that

“But I always kept good tires
On whatever mechanical
Critter I was depending on
To get me back
Always kept the brakes
In good shape.  And
I was damned lucky.”

They sit silent
Watch the shadows
Crawl into arroyos
Far below.

Simon & Garfunkel – The Sound of Silence 1966 live
http://youtu.be/FaSFzp6IDgw

5 Comments

Posted in Adventure, Creative Writing, Human Behavior, Poetry, Senior Citizens, Youth

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Misplaced Worries

Posted on August 8, 2011 by | 8 comments

Writing an earlier y2k entry got me thinking how often we humans tend to worry about the wrong things.  Reminded me of a guy I used to fly with a bit during the late 1970s named John Rynertson.  John was a man who flew a blue Cessna 120.  It was a lot like the 140 Helldragger I flew (pictured above).  But he was also a man prone to introduce himself to people around the Killeen, Texas airport as “one of the best pilots around”.

Naturally there were those who didn’t favor his self-introductions involving pilot skills.

John wasn’t a man who could claim a lot of friends.  But he did have a wife almost as desirable as that 120 he flew.  So pretty, she was, that whenever he wasn’t flying, John was worrying about her.  He fretted over what she might be doing when he was off flying, or when he was almost anywhere he couldn’t keep an eye on her.  Which was a good bit of the time.  Old John just worried himself silly about that woman.

Then one day he was flying with some warrant officer from Fort Hood and managed to get more airspeed than that old airframe was willing to put up with.  The 120 wasn’t rated for snap rolls.  But being one of the best pilots around, John just naturally figured they weren’t referring to him when they rated the airplane.  Wings came spang off that mama at about 3,000 feet above the ground.

Turned out John didn’t need to be worrying about what his wife was doing.  If he was going to worry, he needed to be focusing on learning to stay alive and fly at the same time.

Whatever his wife might or mightn’t have been doing while he was alive, she certainly did it after he was grease scattered over an acre of ground.

Similarly, I recall all those kids who used to spend all their time worrying about getting drafted for Vietnam, then overdosed on something and ended up corpses right here in the good old US of A with never having been fired at in anger.

A person needs to use a lot of care, consult an internal map, look at the compass and GPS, picking things to be worried about.  Otherwise he’ll spend all his time worrying about things that don’t happen while the things that do sneak up behind him and tap him above the ear with a ball-peen hammer.
Old Jules

Nat Shilkret & The Victor Orchestra – Lucky Lindy
http://youtu.be/kflQSovXfw0

8 Comments

Posted in 1970's, Adventure, Flying, Free, Human Behavior, Outdoors

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Learning to Live with Being Stupid

Posted on July 23, 2011 by | 3 comments

The discovery, beginning about 15 years ago, that I’m not anywhere near as smart as I think I am, and that I’m a world away from knowing as much as I think I know, has been unsettling and somewhat disruptive.  That realization, along with the concurrent observation that an overwhelming piece of what I do know is wrong, hasn’t been as easy to incorporate into something useful in my life as you might think.

Before my smarts and knowings all started to unravel I was a fairly impressive person.  I could explain, without you even asking me to do it, just about anything you might be wondering about.  I knew what you ought to do with your life, how your life became the lousy, empty mess it appears to me to be, and what the government ought to do about anything it had the power to do.  I knew what men ought to do about women and other men, and I knew what women ought to do about men and other women.

I began to get screwed out of that when  out of the corner of my eye I noticed some aspects of my own life that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone.  It crept into my consciousness that I’d made a lot of choices and given a plethora of advice to others that simply didn’t have a lot of merit.

This didn’t come all at once.  It started as a trickle with a lot of seemingly small matters I couldn’t help noticing, which I tried to compartmentalize and ignore, same as everyone else does.  But eventually I couldn’t keep them inside the fences I’d built for them.  They were forever sneaking over mingling with others I’d locked up in file drawers I’d clearly marked, “TOP SECRET – DO NOT OPEN”.

This forced me to try to herd them back where they belonged, but in doing so the others tagged along, dancing and clowning and shamelessly demanding I recognize they existed, wanting me to scratch them behind the ears and pay some attention to them.

I figured the easiest approach would be to have a look at their blood lines and shoot the mongrels and mutts, but keep the purebreds.  This required an examination of how I came by all that knowing of every description.

It rocked me to my boot heels to find almost every one of those certainties  came from something someone else said, and I believed it, hugged it tight, and called it my own.  That wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t then asked myself where the people I’d heard it from came to own it.   Imagine my surprise when it dawned on me they’d also heard it from someone else, who heard it from someone else.

Gradually, I realized I hadn’t done much thinking for myself.  In fact, I hadn’t based much of anything on the evidence of my own eyes and observations.  Strangers with the voice of authority told me many things other strangers had told them and I frequently accepted it as gospel.  I often abdicated my intelligence in favor of those strangers many times removed.   Without consciously deciding to do so, I treated truth as though it relied on a vote-count of humans to decide its own nature.

I hate it, discovering something like that.  The last 15 years of dismantling a system of giving strangers default authority to control my mind and my life hasn’t even been entirely successful.  I still constantly find the opinions of strangers creeping in, waving their arms around, trying to grab control so I won’t be stupid anymore.

But I’m determined to keep at it.  All those strangers saying things back and forth to one another and believing it over time hasn’t done much good for the people who believe it now.

And it never did me a damned bit of good, even though I was smarter when I believed it, too.
Old Jules

Glen Campbell – Gentle on My Mind
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFIRTtn_ZSE

3 Comments

Posted in Education, Human Behavior

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The Liar: The Great Speckled Bird, Part 2

Posted on July 19, 2011 by | 4 comments

I’ve described a few of the attributes of the GSB on another entry, http://tinyurl.com/4yxat2b,  but I didn’t get around to mentioning another  facet of his complex character traits.  He’s a liar.

When he finds food he’ll burble in a special way for the hens, he won’t eat, but pecks it, lifts it with his beak and drops it, bringing the hens running from all directions to fight over whatever it is.

But sometimes GSB gets lonely when he hasn’t found any food.  He’s crippled up and has to move about with a crow-hop, so chasing hens down when he’s lonely doesn’t come easy the way it does for other roosters.

GSB’s developed a practical solution to the problem.  He lies.

When things get slow and GSB wants companionship he’ll pick a spot where he might have found food if there’d been some there, and he’ll burble, scratch and peck, picking up imaginary food and dropping it.  The hens are wise to this tactic.  Somehow they’re able to sense he’s faking it, so they keep on with whatever they’re doing.

But GSB knows hens.  Keeps right on, insisting he’s actually got something they’d like.  Gets excited, urgent in his pronouncements about what he’s offering.  Eventually, one or another of the hens will begin to meander toward him, curiosity overcoming the weight of her experience and common sense.  Usually when one hen heads toward him the others can’t stand the thought she might get something they’ll miss, so the momentum increases and becomes a race to see who’ll get to him first.

When a hen reaches him GSB lifts the imaginary morsel one more time, burbles, and mounts her for a quickie.  The other hens lose interest, GSB dismounts and wanders away, and the hen stays squatted on the spot a couple of minutes on the chance he’ll come back for more.

But if it’s to be done, best it were done quickly.

Old Jules

The Taker – Kris Kristofferson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfkN2i-yS04
He’s a giver, he’ll give her
The kind of attention that she’s never known
He’s a helper, he’ll help her
To open the doors that she can’t on her own
He’s a lover, he’ll love her
In ways that she never has been loved before
And he’s a getter, he’ll get her
By gettin her into the world she’s been hungerin’ for

’cause he’s a taker, he’ll take her
To places and make her fly higher than she’s ever dared to
He’ll take his time before takin’ advantage
Takin’ her easy and slow
And after he’s taken the body and soul
That she gives him, he’ll take her for granted
Then he’ll take off and leave her
Takin’ all of her pride as he goes

He’s a charmer, and he’ll charm her
With money and manners that I never learned
He’s a leader, and he’ll lead her
Across pretty bridges he’s planning to burn
He’s a talker, he’ll talk her
Right off of her feet, but he won’t talk for long
Cause he’s a doer, and he’ll do her
The way that I never
And damned if he won’t do her wrong
’cause he’s a taker, he’ll take her
To places and make her fly higher than she’s ever dared to
He’ll take his time before takin’ advantage
Takin’ her easy and slow
And after he’s taken the body and soul
That she gives him, he’ll take her for granted
Then he’ll take off and leave her
Takin’ all of her pride as he goes

4 Comments

Posted in 2011, Animals, Chickens, Country Life, Free-ranging-chickens, Human Behavior, Liars, Outdoors, Poultry, Relationships

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A Strange Way of Thinking

Posted on July 10, 2011 by | 12 comments

I’ve encountered this other places, but the first time was several years ago from the man in the picture.

Dean Kindsvater.  Deano.  A man who never saw $50,000 free and clear in his sixty-four years of life.  He played the lottery, but he’d scoff when the prizes weren’t in the high millions.  He’d buy tickets for the big jackpots and wouldn’t even check them if nobody won.  “Hell,” he’d say, “those small prizes aren’t even worth the trouble!”

Here’s a guy, never finished high school, left home in his low-teen years, bounced around as a dish washer and short-order cook for years.  Finally got into the HeeChee jewelry manufacturing business in the early `70s.  Bought an old railroad hotel in Belen, NM, ran a team of illegal aliens out of the top floor until someone discovered Heechee  could be made cheaper in Southeast Asia.

Deano rode through, living in one room of the bottom floor of that hotel the remainder of his life.  Windows all boarded up, top floor a vacant ruin of pigeon droppings and the debris of the life of the man.  He opened a junk shop and sold odds and ends and made up the difference moving a little jade on the side.  Lived downstairs with a propane bottle for heat, extension cords running all over the place from the one outlet, keeping the TV going, the microwave oven for coffee, refrigerator for TV dinners. Cold water sink to wash his utensils.

Three mongrel dogs living there with him.

The only book Dean ever read in his entire life convinced him he could make a living playing Blackjack, which he couldn’t.  Visiting him in that hotel the first time, knocking on that door, hearing him coming from the interior coughing, reminded me of a Frankenstein movie, him as Igor.

I was with him once when someone asked him what religion he was.  “Christian.”…. “No… I mean what denomination?  Catholic?  Baptist?”

Deano thought about it before he answered.  “Catholic.”  But the conversation afterward suggested Deano didn’t know the difference between a Catholic and a Baptist.  He’d never stopped to think about it.  To him those churches he never went into were all alike, all the same bunch of folks.  Never entered his mind that it might be something worth thinking about.  Never been in a church in 64 years of life, never paused to wonder anything at all about anything at all, so far as I could tell.  A unique man.

But Deano thought the prizes too small to bother with if the jackpot was just $10 million.  Never even bothered to check if he’d won  the $100K someone had a ticket for in NM, but had never claimed.  He had, in common with a lot of other people, that scorn for the smaller prizes that could have changed his life.  He’d probably be shyly flattered, knowing his picture was up here for strangers to see.  Flattered and a little suspicious.  “How’s this going to make anyone any money?” he’d ask the universe.

RIP Deano.

Hope the prizes are bigger wherever the heck you are these days.

Old Jules

12 Comments

Posted in Human Behavior, Lottery, Senior Citizens

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The Great Speckled Bird: Respecting our Betters

Posted on June 29, 2011 by | 5 comments

We humans cross paths with nobility so rarely, the surprise is in the fact we recognize there’s something akin to reality behind the concept.  Instead of looking for it we make heroes of celebrities, preachers, soldiers, cops, politicians, popular science personalities and any gender capable of making our genitals tingle.

We need heroes too badly to hold out for anything worthy of admiration in our fellow humans.  Far better to have a fat, power-drunken political radio rhetorician, an angry, strutting songster shouting a drumbeat of communal self-pity,  a tribe of pierced, tattoo–branded cattle, anyone who can catch a football  to represent the best we can find as objects of our veneration,  than to have nothing at all.

But I’ve digressed.

Probably Christendom runs amok with people who share their lives with creatures they believe are noble, worthy of a higher level of respect than the fantasy masturbation indulged in when they consider their favorite preacher, guru, rock star, or pleasing features.  A cat, a horse, a dog– anything capable of out-doing a human being when it comes to loyalty and the ability to do well what nature gave it the means of doing.  Most settle for less, knowing it doesn’t require perfection to trump any competition the human species is likely to put forward.

I’ve known a good many cats, and share my life with some now I’d stack up against the great majority of humans I’ve met in 6.8 decades of life.  They were good, each in ways we measure felines.

But the Great Speckled Bird is in a class all his own.

He was given to me as a discard, a crippled leg, a wing that hung low from some past injury.  I took him, but I wasn’t glad.  Not until a few days later when I saw him trying to convince a hen that a particular spot was okay for laying eggs.  Not until he snuggled himself into the spot while she looked on, hen-like.  Not until he stood guard at the entry while she did her business.

That was my first hint there was something special going on here.  I’ve admired roosters for conspicuous courage, smiled at their pride and posturing, cursed their wrong-headedness, acknowledged over time that traits of average roosters bear a lot of similarity to those of human heroes, celebrities, and the common run of mankind, only the roosters are more consistent, better at  it.

Learning to respect the Great Speckled Bird required me to suspend disbelief.  I had to learn to believe my eyes and forget the expectations acquired by long acquaintance with roosters.

Over time I watched him deprive himself as a matter of ritual, calling the hens to any food he found, picking it up showing it to them, dropping the morsel for them to fight over.  Refusing to go into the chicken-house at night until all the hens were safely inside.  A few months after his arrival I’d lost seven hens to some predator within a couple of days.  I was indoors when I heard the cacophony of flock alarm somewhere out back, took up a long gun and hurried to see what was wrong.  The Great Speckled Bird took flank position and we trekked in the direction of loose feathers up the hill.  I knew I’d lost another chicken, but I saw no sign of what got her.

Suddenly TGSB spread his wings and made a run for a cedar about 40 yards away.  When he was a few yards away a fox darted from beneath, crosswise to both our paths.  I fired and the fox chose to visit the place where chickens don’t have roosters and men with guns to guard them, or whatever place fox-folk think they go when they die.

Last winter was a tough one for the Great Speckled Bird.  Younger roosters were maturing and a long cold spell weakened him enough so the beta birds discovered they could beat him out in a fight.  I caged them so they couldn’t follow through, and he recovered.

But I’ve just pulled a brooding hen off nine eggs she sat for 25 days, none of them fertile.  The winter must have done more damage than his frost-bitten comb and the beatings from the other roosters.  No more chicks around here until he’s gone, but I doubt he’ll make it through another winter.

One morning I’ll go out there, see him lying beneath the roosting hens and whisper, the king is dead.  Long live the king.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2011, Adventure, Animals, Chickens, Country Life, Free-ranging-chickens, Homesteading, Poultry, Senior Citizens, Texas

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