PROLOGUE
565 Words
PROLOGUE
It was late November, and every breath turned to fog, as I waited and watched a five-hundred-pound
calf sniffing a trail of cow patties leading from his pen to a narrow chute. The
chute, fifty feet long and bordered by steel rails, curved gently to the right and
ended in a head gate that would catch and hold the calf. Once we released the calf,
another alley would return him to his pen.
We’d been trying to turn a group of calves into the chute, and they’d been deftly
avoiding it. I stood quietly, getting cold and hoping “Sniffer” would decide he’d
found a trail used by other cattle and follow it. Two other calves watched their
companion and lunged to get ahead of him. They weren’t sure about the alley, but
they’d be damned if they’d let Sniffer go there, or anywhere else, ahead of them.
Sniffer bolted toward the chute to stay in the lead. Now, we had three calves stuck
in an opening two calves wide. All we wanted to do was vaccinate them and send them
back to their pen, which should have taken ten seconds per calf, but we’d been working
for half an hour and hadn’t vaccinated one. This is why cattlemen learn to weave
torrid tapestries of profanity.
A few minutes of prodding and profanity and Sniffer pushed ahead of his mates and
raced down the alley, pursued by the others. He’d gone barely five yards before he
skidded to a halt and desperately tried to back up, possibly remembering that the
last time he went this way was the day he became a steer. His brethren, still determined
to get ahead of him, pushed him forward.
If Sniffer doubted whether following bullshit was a good idea, the calves behind
him had no such reservations. I gritted my teeth and cursed. They were wasting my
time, the time of the other four men in my crew, and expending all this effort to
go in a circle, from and to their pen.
It occurred to me that most would see this differently if the calves were people.
We’d call the calf trying to back up the “Leader” and those pushing his sorry butt
forward “Followers.” Leaders and Followers apparently see things differently—something
drilled into me every other November.
Come to think of it, it’s in November and December that we hold our national celebrations
to honor wishful thinking and bad judgment. After our biennial celebration of the
political non sequitur in early November, we save the rest of the month to contemplate
our diets and most of December to think about our budgets. Looked at that way, these
calves were paragons of reason compared to the folks I’ve known.
Maybe, people are the only species dumber than cattle. A historian might be forgiven
if he thought Homo sapiens preternaturally talented when it comes to grabbing stupid
ideas and running with them. I have to admit, I haven’t been good at weeding the
good from the “bat-crap crazy” either. Sometimes, it seems my life has been a series
of virtuoso performances in the “stupid” genre, ranging from garden-variety dense
to flaming-fruitcake nuts.
I should have guessed I was getting help in this department, but I have two doctorates,
so no one expected me to see the obvious.
- Writer
