GwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwD
    T h e  G R E E N Y  w o r l d  D o m i n a t i o n  T a s k  F o r c e
                                   Presents:
                          "Cow Stompin'! (ohhhhh boy)"
                               by Seth Sometimes

        Since many people think that GwD is a rip-off of cDc, I've decided to
write a file on cows. Not dead one's though..real, live, smelly cows. 

        During the summer, I sometimes go to my Grandmother's ranch to work
cattle..my father bundles the family up in ye olde mini-van and carts up to
there on some timeless Friday night and we are dragged out of bed the next
morning to find that we are in fact over 120 miles from home and that it is 4 in
the morning. Ouch. Not a pleasant feeling, believe me...and to compound this
amazing way to start the day we are informed to get dress as we must go Cow
Stompin' for the rest of the day. Oooh. Fun. We climb into some pickup truck and
head down to whatever pasture we're working this morning and promptly fall
asleep again...we are waken 2 or 3 hours later to find that the sun has risen
and the cows are all in the pens... Out of the pickup we head (I keep saying
'we', what I mean is my sister and I, my mother sleeps in and helps make
lunch..) My sister takes care of the shots. Cow shots do not look like regular
syringes, because cow hides are a lot tough than our skins; no their shots look
like some crappy water gun with an inch-long needle at the end. My job is to
help flank the cattle...a *mite* tougher than sticking a shot into a cow. There
are several other experienced cow men with us..My father not included..oh, he's
there, but I would not classify him as one of these guys...Rough, usually lean,
not all tall, and not all with cowboy hats on..my uncle (a quiet, hard man who
hardly ever cracks a smile) wears a fisherman's hat, it works better...I wear an
infamous baseball hat (with some ad for farming on it..)..while my cousin Carey,
destined to become one of the cow men, wears a standard cowboy hat. Carey is
going into 7th grade, he lives with his parents and sister out "across the dirt
road" from my grandparents, and they live about 30 minutes from the nearest
town, Clarendon. Amy (my other cousin) helps vaccinate with my sister... Carey
flanks the cows with me, in between his jovial banter with the cow men...So
basically, the jobs are divided like this..The cow men, Carey, and me all flank
(and/or rope; they take turns roping the cows, more on that later though) while
one of the cow men brand, and my sister and Amy do the various shots, my uncle
castrates the bulls and slits the ears (no, I don't know why..), and my
grandfather ear tags 'em. I'll describe these various ministrations by
describing the whole process...First off, one of the cow men is on his horse,
and he mills around among the cattle until he finds a calf (we only work the
calves this way, the cows are done later..) he then tries to get the calf to
move, when the unwary calf does move, he ensnares it's hind legs in his lasso
and tightens the loop around the calf's ankles, he then spurs his horse and
drags the calf backwards and the flankers run out to do their job; in this case,
I'm running out with Carey because it's a small calf.. Carey and I run out, I
grab the rope, while Carey grabs the tail, I then pull up and out on the rope
while Carey pulls down and in, causing the calf to fall on his side, hard. I
pull the rope off the calf's ankles and spread the cows hind legs by sticking my
left foot behind it's ankle and grabbing the other ankle with my hands and
pulling the legs as far apart as I can...Carey grabs the top leg and puts it
in a "cow nelson" (which is just him folding the leg at the knee and pushing it
down onto the cows side) some kind soul comes over and steps on the other fore
leg and thus we pin all four legs. This is a great spectacle. Me, sitting on the
ground (or sometimes in a pile of cow shit) with one foot shoved behind one leg
and the other foot being sat upon by the cow and pulling the legs apart, Carey
putting all his meager weight upon the cows fore leg trying to hold onto it,
with the cow grunting and trying with all it's might to kick us off...When we
have the calf securely pinned, my sister and Amy come over and give it all the
medicine and what-not, while my uncle comes and cuts the cows scrotum and yanks
out its testes, he then goes to the head and slits the ears (to mark it, I
think..)... My grandfather (like most Thornberrys, lean and a little over 6')
puts on the ear tags, then my father comes over and uses the dehorning tool to
take out the just-forming horns, once the horns are cut off, the place where the
horns were starts spraying blood over everything..which isn't that bad, since
the blood is a lot prettier than anything else out there...once the horns are
out, someone comes over with the branding iron and brands the calf..Great smells
out there: cow, cow shit, and burnt cow....once everything is done, I grab the
tail, Carey gets up, then the cow does and pulls me to my feet...This continues
until all the calves are taken care of, with the cow men trading off roping
every 5-6 calves...and us trading off flanking depending upon size, the sizes
range from small calves (about to your waste and around 70-100 pounds) to the
large ones (which are basically cows, stomach to chest height, 200-300 pounds)
Once all the calves have been worked, the cows are run through the shoot, (an
enclosure about 3-4 feet wide and the length depends upon the size of the lot,
supposedly enough room for one cow to fit in line comfortably..ha.) and given
their various vaccinations, but after the calves are done, my sister and I stand
around and look like the city-dwellers that we are...Once the cows are done,
they rejoin their young and all are sprayed with insect repellent. That's it..
for this pasture..We all head in to the house..To eat the most amazing food in
the world. My grandmother is a breath-taking cook. After lunch, it's off to work
the next pasture and then off to bed...only for this all to be repeated
tomorrow. Ugh.

        Ok. there. I finally did it. It's crappy, I could have done a much
better job on it, if I had written it about 4 hours ago, but I didn't have time
then, so there it is. Enjoy it or not. I've finally written it after over a year
of procrastination about it. Bah.

------------------------------[GwD Command Centers]-----------------------------
    Chaos               (806)797-7501   |   Club Baby Seal     (806)XXX-XXXX
    GridPoint           (405)920-1347   |   Static Line        (806)747-0802
    Federation Slayers' (806)798-8168   |   The Anti-BBS       (806)763-3549
    The Snake's Den     (806)793-3779   |   PCI                (806)793-3302
    The Siege Perilous  (806)762-0948   |   The Sprawl         (806)797-0820
    Brazen's Hell       (301)776-8259   |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Starchy White Boy BBS and Light My Fire are down, but may go back up at any
time.  And Club Baby Seal is private with weird hours.  Yeah.  We'll keep you
posted.  Only because we're nice.  Yeah.
                                                             /---------------\
copyright (c) 1994 by Seth Sometimes of GwD Inc.             :FIGHT THE POWER:
GREENY world Domination Task Force copyright (c) 1993 by Lobo:      GwD      :
All rights reserved and other such legal crap.               \---------------/
GwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwDGwD31
