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My neighbor is a real, honest to God moron. Not very many people can claim this status in the world. In fact, out of all the people that I know, only two really fit in this catagory, my neighbor and my ex-husband.
Back in July, the moron decides that he doesn't want the folks that irrigate for another neighbor crossing his place to get to the irrigation ditch. This other neighbor is kind of landlocked between the moron and me. The moron didn't think to tell them to go ahead and cross MY place, oh no, that would be what most folks call "sensible". Instead, what he decides to do is tear down the fence and build a road in there. Not only that, but he also decides that it's all right if he leaves the fence down between his place and this other one.
This guy doesn't have anything that grazes, so I don't know why he thought it would be a good idea to step in on my lease, but he did.
At that point, he had the fence down to the road AND the fence down to his place.
No one bothered to call me and tell me what was going on, I just assumed the that place between us had changed hands. Not so. I'm still holding the lease on it.
The other night, Mr. Moron himself calls to ask about horse prices. He wantes to buy a colt and train it himself. This is a man who has been struggling for 2 years to teach a Border Collie to coon hunt. Get a grip.
So after trying to explain that even though he has excellent health insurance, his hide would benefit more from buying a real nice older, broke horse. He finally gets mad and says, "Dammit, Jackie, just tell me what horses are worth!"
I yell back, "On the hoof, thrity-five cents a pound!"
Then I ask about the fence. The basic story I got was the one about irrigating. When asked when that fence was going back up, he hemmed and hawed and wiggled some. So I mentioned that I held the lease and wanted my horses kicked out.
"You're welcome to do that. They're done irrigating."
"Irrigation water has been shut off since mid-September. They were done irrigating in July. I know this because I was the last in line to irrigate, so I was after them. That fence was torn down in August, that's after they were done irrigating. Now, tell me, you mendin' that fence or what?"
"Ummm. . . . I ain't got wire. I only have 2-prong. I have to go back to the railroad next week and I don't know how long I'll be gone."
And, you have to wash your hair, feed the dog and do your nails. Do I look fat in this dress? Jerk. . .
I had my answer. Another first rate, half-assed job that I had to fix. The fence is already 2-prong, and he didn't have to replace it, just stretch and splice. Would have taken him a few minutes.
Breathe in, breathe out.
A few days later, I head out with all my fencing tools. What could have been an hour of my day ended up being six. He screwed it up that bad.
Not only did he cut the wire, but he slacked it and tore out two T-posts to build his road. No wonder he didn't want to fix it.
I'm still breathing, here. I've counted forwards and backwards to and from ten about 3,000 times. . .
Men have been shot for less than this, and not a jury in the world would convict the shooters. I thought about going over and just wailing on this guy's head with my fencing tool. The local judge would understand. He knows how much I hate fencing. He'd probably just write me a citation for littering. I decided that it would waste more time than I had, so instead I got to work.
Now, let me say that I've streched more wire in my life than post people could calculate. When I applied for my first town job, it was on my resume that I had 25 years of experience stretching wire.
The administrator at the hospital had no idea what I was talking about, but he hired me anyway, and never regretted it for a minute. I got promotions every year until I couldn't take that kind of life anymore and went back to ranching.
Keeping this in mind, I want to say that I hate fencing. I know that I've said it before, but I hate it that much. I hate it worse when I have to string anything with prongs. The more prongs, the worse it is. A bad day roping is better than a good day fencing.
This particular day, I was running two strands of 2-prong with one strand of smooth wire on the bottom for a quarter mile.
It was not a good day.
Fencing is sort of like herding cats. You may only have to run those critters into the next room, but it takes the whole house to get it done.
With fencing, You may only have to run three strands a quarter mile, but you walk six miles to get it done.
I have a Border Collie personality. I have to be doing something all the time, and it better be something I like. I'm emotionally unstable and easily bored. Scary. And, fencing is boring. REALLY boring.
Anyway, I was out stringing twine and got to thinking (not good) about a lot of different things.
I thought about terrorism, Anthrax, what's going to happen next. . . and Osama bin Laden.
I thought of the perfect punishment for this ol' boy and his Taliban buddies.
We bring them out to rural America and have them build fence. Here's the deal: They have to take down the old 4-prong government wire, that's been there since just after the Civil War ended and the government in this part of the country made land grants available for settlement (something akin to razor wire in prisons), and put up 2-prong barb.
One man to a fence line, the only tools they get are a post hole digger, fencing pliers and a stretcher. There won't be a tractor available to dig post holes, they have to do it themselves. In July.
Wimpy, you say? You haven't heard the rest of the plan.
They only get to do this in the clothes that they brought over from Afghanistan. Them dress things that they wear. Honestly, it's not going to matter if they come over in full body armor, if the fence don't get them, the heat will.
They don't get Tetnus shots. When I say that some of that fence has been hanging since the late 1800's, I'm not kidding. If it comes down, we splice it until it falls apart. There are interesting critters out there, too. Rattlesnakes, bulls, my mare (she hates anything on the ground under her feet), coyotes, the occasional mountain lion, bob cats.
The terrain is nothing to sneeze at, either. Bluffs, mountains, the flats are just as bad, dry washes, gullies, arroyos, old wells. Accidents happen, and some folks never get found.
The keepers have the water. They dole it out when they want. They also have the doctoring supplies, sutures, bandaids, salve. . . You get the idea.
Who are these 'keepers'? A bunch of died in the wool ranch women. I'll be among those women, you can bet on that, folks.
We'll be armed with shotguns, rifles, Bowies and hot shots.
For a minor infraction, the prisoner will get a good dose of electricity, for a major one, he'll get shot in the kneecaps, the Bowies are around for scare factor. Nothing scarier than watching a pissed off woman sharpen a Bowie knife then peel an apple.
Why the kneecaps? Because a lot of fencing is done on your knees. After they're shot, they get to go back to work.
Can we really shoot well enough to hit the kneecaps? Darlin', we can knock a maggot off a bull's ass at 50 paces and not touch a hair on the bull.
There are a couple of really great things about this plan.
First, their buddies back home can't make them martyrs unless they're sure that they're dead. They'll never be sure. They don't know Wyoming from a hole in the ground. They're right positive that no one would live in such a God-forsaken place. They're pretty much right, not very many people want to live here.
Second, the women up here are very aware of how the women in Afghanistan are treated. And, we don't like it. They tried to do that over here, you know what would happen? See the reference to the maggot on the bull's butt. Women up here know how to dish out some of the worst torture on the face of the planet, boys, don't doubt it. You don't know what terror is until you've gotten under the skin of a half-breed ranch woman with a chip on her shoulder the size of Texas.
Not only that, but we have about 6,000 other reasons to hate these rotten, camel jockeying SOB's.
And, that's just ME! Some of my compadres are far worse than I am. No wonder we can't get a date.
We stay up nights devising plans for these ol' boys. We'd like to e-mail them to Dubya for approval. He'd think that we were good patriots.
I haven't forgotten about stretching wire, here. I'm just thinking this stuff while I'm stretching.
Another plan came to mind. This one was inspired by an e-mail.
The e-mail suggested that we catch Osama, bring him to the States, give him a sex change operation, then send him back to live under the Taliban as a woman.
I say we do better than that. . .
We turn him into a beautiful woman, just stack that boy up, THEN send him back to Afghanistan. When we send him back, though, we drag him into a back alley in Kabul, leave him there wearing nothing but a 3x5 inch American flag. Then hide in a building to watch what happens.
Imagine that. . . .
O.K., so now you're wishing that I had just beat my neighbor into submission and made him build the fence. Those trips through my mind are sometimes the things that poetry is made of. This time, I got through my fencing ordeal on shear rage. . .
*A side note: Ranchers are the kindest people running. We're the ones who bottle feed kittens, take newborn calves in the house to get warm, sit with our kids to watch "Mighty Joe Young" for the millionth time, then still cry at the end. We'll give a person the shirt off our backs, if it's needed, and not expect anything in return. Our communities are so tight that you cut one of us, we'll all bleed.
However, you don't do anything to make us mad. We're real slow to anger, but once we're past that, we're past it and someone is going to pay. Osama is one that's just got to pay for his mistake. This is not aimed at anyone who sides us, by the way, just the ones who don't.*
October, 2001
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