Vaca Mexicana
©Ken Harris, 2008
In 1956 or 57 my wife and I lived in a Hollywood apartment and attended universities. We were both working very hard and welcomed the opportunity to take a brief vacation whenever we could. Usually we went to Joanne’s the cabin. Usually we took Bobo, a poodle, with us. He was supposed to keep us out of trouble.
Bobo was very intelligent and could learn anything in five minutes. However, he could forget anything he wanted in ten minutes. He also put his own spin on his orders of the day. “Don’t get on the couch” meant “Don't let anyone see you on the coucn." But he was pleasant company even with his faults.
On this particular occasion we had finished supper in the cabin and the three of us went for a walk to the meadow several hundred yards to the north. We gingerly crawled through a rusty barbed wire fence surrounding the pasture and noted the sign of many cattle. The meadow was part of the Bureau of Land Management domain and overgrazing seemed to be a part of their policy.
We came across the herd. There were a lot of them. Mexican cows, some with twisty horns, all of them lean. A few had extravagant brands on their hips. None of them looked like Elsie, the Bordens cow. The herd bull stood to the far side of the herd and ignored us. He didn’t look like Elmer, either. His disinterest in us was his only redeeming trait that I could see.
We stayed clear of the herd and tried to keep within running distance of the fence. It was just as well we had, for Bobo found a calf. He immediately tried to play a game with the calf, something named “I chase you around.” The calf cried, “Mama!”
The old lady showed up immediately. As soon as she saw Bobo and us her expression changed from exasperation to menace. She was a strawberry road cow, so lean you could count her ribs, and she had long, twisty, glinting horns. The right horn would have gone in my navel and out my nose.
We called for Bobo, quietly. “Bobo.” Then firmly. “Bobo!” Then desperately. “BOBO!!!”
By this time the cow had decided which of us she wanted to gore first and she began to move. So did we. I beat Joanne to the fence by several yards at once demonstrating speed and lack of gallantry. Bobo, delighted that we had joined in the game, yapped and barked even harder. He never understood the danger we all faced. And so long as he could outrun us, I guess he didn't face any real danger.
The calf ran away from all the noise and confusion and the cow followed. And that’s all of the story. Nothing bad really happened. Except I remember thinking the next morning as I shaved, “This is ridiculous. I shouldn't get grey at 23.”
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
The Dead Bull
One summer when I was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, who knows, around 1950, there was a fire guard up at the Ranger Station. Two people I was googoo over were the fire guard and Nita Williams. The fire guard said he’d love to have some cow horns. I said, “Well, there’s bound to be some around here somewhere. I’ll keep an eye open.”
A little later Mom and I were over at the Kings and I was talking about how I would love to find some cow horns. Frank said he’d heard there was a dead bull up Chilson Creek a ways. Shouldn’t be much more than a mile or so.
So I walked up the canyon, up the creek, but I didn’t come to it. I went back to the cabin and said I couldn’t find it, so Mom said she’d walk up with me. She said maybe I didn’t go far enough. So we walked further up the canyon and, lo and behold, we came to a big bull lying there that had a nice set of horns. We looked at him and then we looked up and about two hundred feet further there was another bull lying there dead. There was blood on its nose, the eyes were still in it and the yellowjackets were just starting to come. There was a little tiny slit in the stomach skin where somebody had been pulling on it. Mother and I looked at each other. We didn’t say a word. We turned around and we took off at the run. Whoever shot that bull was still there. Later on we kidded that we needed to put a notice up at the Post Office. “Whoever shot the bull up in Chilson Canyon, we didn’t see you.”
For a while there was a Post Office at the saw mill when it was active. Anna Horne, Oakley’s wife, was the Post Mistress. Since they went back and forth all the time, it was the Post Office for a few years. And then there was the summer the vegetable truck came up. The guy would come up on one day of the week, say a Thursday. He’d bring the mail and he’d take orders for fresh vegetables. We’d order meat and buy vegetables whenever he came up, so it got to be a place where everybody met. I saw Louie the Indian after not having seen him for years and years down at the vegetable truck.
In fact, that’s where I got the letter that snared Ken Harris. Because Zoanne and I had been up there for a week and a letter came to me from Ken and he said, among other things, “I’m putting it in writing. Will you marry me?” After that he was caught. In those days they had, what did they call it when you begged off after asking someone to marry you? Breach of promise?
We hunted a lot. Most every day somebody went out hunting. Fritz and I used to hunt quail because if you went up to the Squaw Pocket Mine on the edge of the meadow during the day, especially in the morning. Quail would come down from high up in the hills where they nested down to the meadow where they could hide in the grass and get water. We knew enough about the mountain quail calls to know what they were talking about. As they moved down in a covey, you could hear one over here talking and anther over there talking, and you could tell that they were moving along. Now if something spooked them, you could immediately tell that, too. So what we’d do is we’d try to figure out where they were coming down and we’d hide in ambush. As soon as they came in sight, we’d try to shoot two or three, just whatever we needed.
I used to take the .22 and go up to the willows. They had “willow caves.” They’d go back four or five feet and I used to chase them into the caves. I never, ever got a quail that way.
A little later Mom and I were over at the Kings and I was talking about how I would love to find some cow horns. Frank said he’d heard there was a dead bull up Chilson Creek a ways. Shouldn’t be much more than a mile or so.
So I walked up the canyon, up the creek, but I didn’t come to it. I went back to the cabin and said I couldn’t find it, so Mom said she’d walk up with me. She said maybe I didn’t go far enough. So we walked further up the canyon and, lo and behold, we came to a big bull lying there that had a nice set of horns. We looked at him and then we looked up and about two hundred feet further there was another bull lying there dead. There was blood on its nose, the eyes were still in it and the yellowjackets were just starting to come. There was a little tiny slit in the stomach skin where somebody had been pulling on it. Mother and I looked at each other. We didn’t say a word. We turned around and we took off at the run. Whoever shot that bull was still there. Later on we kidded that we needed to put a notice up at the Post Office. “Whoever shot the bull up in Chilson Canyon, we didn’t see you.”
For a while there was a Post Office at the saw mill when it was active. Anna Horne, Oakley’s wife, was the Post Mistress. Since they went back and forth all the time, it was the Post Office for a few years. And then there was the summer the vegetable truck came up. The guy would come up on one day of the week, say a Thursday. He’d bring the mail and he’d take orders for fresh vegetables. We’d order meat and buy vegetables whenever he came up, so it got to be a place where everybody met. I saw Louie the Indian after not having seen him for years and years down at the vegetable truck.
In fact, that’s where I got the letter that snared Ken Harris. Because Zoanne and I had been up there for a week and a letter came to me from Ken and he said, among other things, “I’m putting it in writing. Will you marry me?” After that he was caught. In those days they had, what did they call it when you begged off after asking someone to marry you? Breach of promise?
We hunted a lot. Most every day somebody went out hunting. Fritz and I used to hunt quail because if you went up to the Squaw Pocket Mine on the edge of the meadow during the day, especially in the morning. Quail would come down from high up in the hills where they nested down to the meadow where they could hide in the grass and get water. We knew enough about the mountain quail calls to know what they were talking about. As they moved down in a covey, you could hear one over here talking and anther over there talking, and you could tell that they were moving along. Now if something spooked them, you could immediately tell that, too. So what we’d do is we’d try to figure out where they were coming down and we’d hide in ambush. As soon as they came in sight, we’d try to shoot two or three, just whatever we needed.
I used to take the .22 and go up to the willows. They had “willow caves.” They’d go back four or five feet and I used to chase them into the caves. I never, ever got a quail that way.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Shooting Cows
One summer we shot 9-L cows. The 9-L was Alexander Rudnik's brand. He ran cattle up on Paiute and constantly overgrazed. Years and years before there had been certain kinds of flowers, but they disappeared with the overgrazing.
This one summer too many 9L cattle were hanging around the cabin. that is, we shot them with a 4-10, trying to hit them in their flanks. It was unfriendly of us, but because we were by a creek, they hung around and it was hard to get rid of them. We didn’t want to blind anybody, so we aimed for the end with the tail. One old bull came by every day. I guess when we shot him we got some shot into his scrotum because he really jumped and took off.
The 9L rounded up this big herd of cows and calves. They missed a little two-year-old steer. The steer, I guess, was lonesome because he kept hanging around the cabin. We knew the roundup had been held and we said, “Mom, can we kill that steer?”
She said, “Absolutely not. That’s criminal. That’s not like poaching, that’s thievery,” and so on. We nagged her and nagged her and nagged her for over two weeks until she finally said, “Oh, all right, go kill the goddamned thing, but do it a long ways from the cabin.”
The day that decision was made, he didn’t show up. We tracked him, and that dumb little animal had left the cabin, headed over the ridge, down Kelso Creek and off the mountain. Smart, smart. I wonder if we were sending out bad vibes?
This one summer too many 9L cattle were hanging around the cabin. that is, we shot them with a 4-10, trying to hit them in their flanks. It was unfriendly of us, but because we were by a creek, they hung around and it was hard to get rid of them. We didn’t want to blind anybody, so we aimed for the end with the tail. One old bull came by every day. I guess when we shot him we got some shot into his scrotum because he really jumped and took off.
The 9L rounded up this big herd of cows and calves. They missed a little two-year-old steer. The steer, I guess, was lonesome because he kept hanging around the cabin. We knew the roundup had been held and we said, “Mom, can we kill that steer?”
She said, “Absolutely not. That’s criminal. That’s not like poaching, that’s thievery,” and so on. We nagged her and nagged her and nagged her for over two weeks until she finally said, “Oh, all right, go kill the goddamned thing, but do it a long ways from the cabin.”
The day that decision was made, he didn’t show up. We tracked him, and that dumb little animal had left the cabin, headed over the ridge, down Kelso Creek and off the mountain. Smart, smart. I wonder if we were sending out bad vibes?
Monday, May 18, 2009
Dealing with Rattlesnakes
Besides the animals we hunted for food, we dealt with a lot of rattlesnakes. When we first moved to French Gulch everyone called it Rattlesnake Gulch. Lots of rattlesnakes there. We were all fairly young. I was probably about five. Fritz would then have been ten and Audrey eleven. Our neighbors used to kid us. “You oughta eat them rattlesnakes. Rattlesnakes are good food.” Of course, not one of them had ever eaten a rattlesnake.
So, what did we know? We wanted to eat a rattlesnake. Mom was gone when we found a rattlesnake in the foundation of the cabin. We dragged it out and killed it and decided to eat it. Mom was raised in a finicky house, even though she was very open minded and we ate all kinds of things. But we knew she wouldn’t really want to eat the snake. So we took action. We knew you were supposed to soak the snake in salt water, so we put it in a soup tureen filled with brine. It was a lovely tureen. It had a lid and everything. When Mama came home the four of us, Beverly (she was there, too), Audrey, Fritz and I, lined up and said, “Mama, we want to cook this.”
We took the lid off the tureen and Mother said, “NO!”
We all cried in unison. It was well rehearsed. She finally said, “Oh, dammit. Look, I’m going up on the hill. And don’t tell me which pan you used.” So we dried off the salt water, cut it up into two-inch sections, rolled it in egg and flour and fried it. My siblings had me eat the first piece. Just in case. Being the youngest child, what did I know?
Ever after that we ate rattlesnake, if they were fat. There are a lot of bones in a rattlesnake, and if it doesn’t have meat on it, it’s not worth the work. We became known for eating rattlesnakes, and in our wanderings over the mountains when we found a rattlesnake we killed it. Now I wouldn’t do that. Kids do stupid things.
We only met two rattlesnakes that were really mean. One of them, I don’t know what had gotten into him. He was beside the road and something must have gotten him upset. We were walking beside the road minding our own business and he coiled up. Then he started to come towards us. We rarely used a gun for a snake. It was a waste of ammunition. We broke their backs with a stick and then cut their heads off with a knife. We all carried knives.
Another time a rattlesnake that had been eating something, trying to swallow it, and apparently it wasn’t warm enough. A cold blooded animal’s temperature depends upon ambient temperature, and they have to have a certain temperature to eat. You can’t put something into a cold oven. Apparently this snake had swallowed it and threw it up, and it was really pissed. He came after us, so we did him in.
Usually the snakes tried to get away. Fritz stepped on one once. It started to rattle and then stopped, like it was embarrassed and shouldn’t have done that. We used to tell visitors that the first person in line wakes it up, the second person makes it mad, and the third person gets bit. In all our years up on Paiute, no one we knew, let alone us kids, ever got bit.
We were always killing rattlesnakes, and we had snake hides. We’d skin the snake out and tack up the hide and add a little salt. Then you’d make a hat band out of it, or you’d give it away, or something. Sometimes we’d just cut the rattles off and save them. Like I say, in this day and age, I would never do this, but kids, what the heck.
One time Fritz and I were out hunting quail out at the Squaw Pocket clain. There was a rock face about ten feet high and twenty feet wide. It was actually a huge boulder pile, but the boulders were very large. This rock face had a split about five feet up. As we walked by a snake fell out of the split. We jumped back and thought, “Jeez, where’d that snake come from?” We looked up and there were other snakes sticking out, too. Apparently it got too crowded up there and this one slipped and came down. So we killed him. Then we got a long stick and started pulling out snakes. Once on the ground, we killed them. We had quite a pile of snakes.
We got about seven or eight snakes that day. Interestingly enough, they were all different colors. They all had the patterns, but some were palish pink, others were palish green. Apparently they had all been shedding and the underlying coat colors were a little different.
We’d gotten a few quail so we put these snakes in the same bag with the quail and took them home to mother. We didn’t tell her what was in the bag and she was unhappy. She berated us.
Mother made us throw the snakes out. We had a deer hanging. We had skinned it out some distance from the cabin and had quartered it up. I guess we gave half of it away. It was fairly fresh, only three days old. Mother told us to get rid of those rattlesnakes and take them a long way from the cabin. Well, you know kids. We went over the hill a little ways and threw them behind a rock where we hoped she wouldn’t find them. Soon the buzzards started circling. We were certain it was the rattlesnakes, but mother thought it was the deer. When she found out it was the snakes, well, we didn’t get a paddling, but we got a dressing down.
On another day we went back and got another six snakes. All in all, we got fourteen snakes out of that nest. We killed them all. That’s what kids do sometimes.
Copyright Joanne Heyser Harris 2009
So, what did we know? We wanted to eat a rattlesnake. Mom was gone when we found a rattlesnake in the foundation of the cabin. We dragged it out and killed it and decided to eat it. Mom was raised in a finicky house, even though she was very open minded and we ate all kinds of things. But we knew she wouldn’t really want to eat the snake. So we took action. We knew you were supposed to soak the snake in salt water, so we put it in a soup tureen filled with brine. It was a lovely tureen. It had a lid and everything. When Mama came home the four of us, Beverly (she was there, too), Audrey, Fritz and I, lined up and said, “Mama, we want to cook this.”
We took the lid off the tureen and Mother said, “NO!”
We all cried in unison. It was well rehearsed. She finally said, “Oh, dammit. Look, I’m going up on the hill. And don’t tell me which pan you used.” So we dried off the salt water, cut it up into two-inch sections, rolled it in egg and flour and fried it. My siblings had me eat the first piece. Just in case. Being the youngest child, what did I know?
Ever after that we ate rattlesnake, if they were fat. There are a lot of bones in a rattlesnake, and if it doesn’t have meat on it, it’s not worth the work. We became known for eating rattlesnakes, and in our wanderings over the mountains when we found a rattlesnake we killed it. Now I wouldn’t do that. Kids do stupid things.
We only met two rattlesnakes that were really mean. One of them, I don’t know what had gotten into him. He was beside the road and something must have gotten him upset. We were walking beside the road minding our own business and he coiled up. Then he started to come towards us. We rarely used a gun for a snake. It was a waste of ammunition. We broke their backs with a stick and then cut their heads off with a knife. We all carried knives.
Another time a rattlesnake that had been eating something, trying to swallow it, and apparently it wasn’t warm enough. A cold blooded animal’s temperature depends upon ambient temperature, and they have to have a certain temperature to eat. You can’t put something into a cold oven. Apparently this snake had swallowed it and threw it up, and it was really pissed. He came after us, so we did him in.
Usually the snakes tried to get away. Fritz stepped on one once. It started to rattle and then stopped, like it was embarrassed and shouldn’t have done that. We used to tell visitors that the first person in line wakes it up, the second person makes it mad, and the third person gets bit. In all our years up on Paiute, no one we knew, let alone us kids, ever got bit.
We were always killing rattlesnakes, and we had snake hides. We’d skin the snake out and tack up the hide and add a little salt. Then you’d make a hat band out of it, or you’d give it away, or something. Sometimes we’d just cut the rattles off and save them. Like I say, in this day and age, I would never do this, but kids, what the heck.
One time Fritz and I were out hunting quail out at the Squaw Pocket clain. There was a rock face about ten feet high and twenty feet wide. It was actually a huge boulder pile, but the boulders were very large. This rock face had a split about five feet up. As we walked by a snake fell out of the split. We jumped back and thought, “Jeez, where’d that snake come from?” We looked up and there were other snakes sticking out, too. Apparently it got too crowded up there and this one slipped and came down. So we killed him. Then we got a long stick and started pulling out snakes. Once on the ground, we killed them. We had quite a pile of snakes.
We got about seven or eight snakes that day. Interestingly enough, they were all different colors. They all had the patterns, but some were palish pink, others were palish green. Apparently they had all been shedding and the underlying coat colors were a little different.
We’d gotten a few quail so we put these snakes in the same bag with the quail and took them home to mother. We didn’t tell her what was in the bag and she was unhappy. She berated us.
Mother made us throw the snakes out. We had a deer hanging. We had skinned it out some distance from the cabin and had quartered it up. I guess we gave half of it away. It was fairly fresh, only three days old. Mother told us to get rid of those rattlesnakes and take them a long way from the cabin. Well, you know kids. We went over the hill a little ways and threw them behind a rock where we hoped she wouldn’t find them. Soon the buzzards started circling. We were certain it was the rattlesnakes, but mother thought it was the deer. When she found out it was the snakes, well, we didn’t get a paddling, but we got a dressing down.
On another day we went back and got another six snakes. All in all, we got fourteen snakes out of that nest. We killed them all. That’s what kids do sometimes.
Copyright Joanne Heyser Harris 2009
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