Celebrities

Someday I’m gonna be famous/ 

Do I have talent?

Well, no.

These days you don’t really need it/

Thanks to reality shows....

(from "Celebrity")

I think they’re going to make one here pretty soon. Really. I mean, surely, after the photographs in the Guadalupe County Communicator or from the random guy who stopped to watch branding, they’re going to want....

OH! I need to tell you that story. Indeed. A good part of my summer break has been spent working cows, or, as my Dad and I like to call it, playing cows. Dad branded two days, my landlords shipped, their friends branded, my dad shipped.  From these days, I could tell a million stories which would either bore or confuse most of you: how my rope got under my horse’s tail and he bucked and I was scared of running over our 3 over-75-year old-assistants, how hard it is to NOT get sleepy and inattentive when sorting pairs (that means choosing certain cows and their own calves to put through the gate) at noon on a hot June day, or how underfed cows have no energy to run away - they just kick a little more often with a little less spunk.

But I won’t. I will tell you that the first day of Dad’s brandings, our corrals were right by the highway. We were working hard when an SUV drove by, turned around, drove by, turned again and pulled up by the fence. A man proceeded to take pictures, from his car, from out of his car, by the fence, on top of his car. Hmmm... an interested tourist? An old wanna be? Or a PETA rep out to smear us? Finally we sent the little ones to invite him to the action. He came, he watched, he asked lots of questions (I don’t think he was from PETA).

“Are these ALL ranch hands?” referring to the crowd of 12 or so - men and women from age 5 up to age 82.

He’s from California. There’re no stereotypes there, I guess, but I still explained that we weren’t exactly “ranch hands.”

Then he wondered about the cows’ diet. I said, “Well... you’d be surprised. They can eat a lot of that,” pointing toward the gray grass, the cholla, and the scattered weeds. “Except - there’s not a lot of that right now. We’re in a drought.”

“What do you do if they run out?”

“Well, we feed them cubes and hay. We’re feeding a lot of hay right now.”

“That must be expensive. “

I think I missed my chance to let a rich donor contribute to the preservation of America’s family agriculture.

----

That wasn’t the end of our claims to fame. The following day a photographer from the Santa Rosa paper who was working on an article about drought came along to get some exciting pictures. She got excitement all right. Besides our normal impressive crew (Grandpa believes that branding is a good substitute for stroke therapy on his right hand) plus a few almost upside down brands and eartags, we had some tense moments when freshly castrated calves had a membrane break and the guts begin to fall out. 

The calves were duly flanked (that means someone picked them up and put them on the ground sidewise, while someone else grabbed the back legs and held them), the vet kit dug out, the guts gently massaged back in, and the membrane gathered and resewn. It was a sight most of us had never seen and would prefer to never see again, and a cause for much speculation as to why or how it happened.

 A picture of 5-year-old Ryan’s intense observation of Pops’ sewing made it into the paper. The drought is taking its toll on the whole community, so the actual article on the paper focused on that, and on the shipment of cattle away from another ranch. It’s dry, my friends. Dad is shipping some of his cattle to a feedlot. We hope it’s a vacation for them, a cruise where they can eat well, while we stay home and wait for rain. Somehow that part isn’t too glamourous. Nobody really likes to watch gloomy ranchers staring at dust devils that look like pictures from the 30s.

Who knows? Maybe someday we will be famous.