Animal stories

The Usual Suspects (Tom & Barb, Elaine, Phil & Kathy, artist Jim Worster, Pat, Bill & Me) gathered at the Bunkhouse for a cookout yesterday. Only Emily was missing. Bill and I cooked salmon and asparagus. Elaine brought a salad in her 2 foot long canoe-shaped wooden salad bowl. Barb brought brownies and blondies for dessert. We ate on the front patio with the wide view of the Little Cottonwood Valley laid out in front of us. Blue sky, green fields, dusty cow-spotted hills. After dinner, and after the hot sun had started setting in the west, we retired track-side for training watching and story telling.

Bill told of the cow carcas he'd found in the smallest of the ponds just west of us. And how Pepper had dragged home a femer the other day, heavy in her mouth for more than half a mile, never questioning whether or not the hours of chewing to come would be worth the effort. Pat told of a cow he'd seen on the way to Witchita the other day. Up to its neck in a pond. Unusual. Phil remembered a calf he'd spotted on a winter day coming home from Kansas City. It was trapped on a pond, unable to move without slipping. Unless you know whose ranch you are driving by there really is nothing to do.

Elaine jumped in with a story she'd heard from a friend . He'd stopped at a farmhouse to ask directions. The farmer invited him in to look a map and the traveler noticed that there was a pig in the kitchen, a big pig with only three legs.

After they'd determined where he'd gotten lost and which way he needed to go, Elaine's friend said to the farmer, "I see you've got a pig in here."

The farmer said, "Yes, that's some pig. You know that pig is really something. One day I was stuck out on the ice on the pond out back. The ice had started to break and I was stranded. Well that pig went and got a rope and managed to get me back to shore. That pig saved my life."

"Wow," said the traveler, "that really is something."

"That's not all," said the farmer. "Not too long ago I had an accident. My tractor turned over and I was caught underneath it. And that pig, that pig somehow managed to lift that tractor up and get me out from under there. Not sure how he did it. But that pig rescued me."

"I see the pig only has three legs," said the traveler.

"Well, a pig like that," said the farmer, "a pig that special, you can't eat a pig like that all at once."