Rabbits & Mules

 

God has blessed us and sent some rain upon the earth below. It was a perfect rain, that which wheat farmers in this country call a “million-dollar rain”, soft and saturating, and just in the nick of time to head-out the wheat crop before harvest in June.

There are still people in our near desert country depending on acts of God. Good. It's why I live here.

Some wheat farmer's kids will now go to college; the family's doctor and vet bills paid, and maybe a new used pickup for the kid still in high school to drive. Mama might get a trip to Neiman-Marcus down in Dallas, with a ticket to see George Strait thrown in, every wheat farmer's wife's dream: something pretty to wear and something pretty to look at. For a change. 

God saved Pam and Conrad's garden as well out here on Baker's Branch, the one the grandkids put in back in March. Our spring planting season has been dry, dry, dry, and entering into our fourth year of drought I was worried about the onions, lettuce, spinach, and potatoes. Nip and tuck, it was, just in time, the soft rain practically causing the garden to moan in pleasure. I heard it and went out to check it last evening just as the first raindrops were hitting the ground. 

I saw two strange things. My old friend, Stacy Gibson, from down around old wild Wister way, has told me for years that cottontail rabbits go through a spring “rut”, or breeding season, complete with crazy, animated antics, just like whitetail deer in the fall. Because I had never witnessed it myself, I did not believe it, although I never told him so. 

When I stepped outside just at dark last night and looked uphill and to the right where we have lain the garden, I saw immediately two rabbits jumping, not in long parabolic arcs as you might expect, but straight up into the air as if propelled there by catapults buried in the ground under their feet. 

I have been considerably worried about our numerous “yard rabbits”, as they ate up a considerable portion of last year's garden. I had put Lane to watch for them with an air gun. He's a good shot, but the wascally critters would not come out until after dark. He got a couple of shots, but only at moving, ghost rabbits. I can tell you that rabbits do not like yellow squash, or zucchini, but will eat tender young okra plants and leaf lettuce right down into the ground. 

Lane and I put up a chicken wire fence about two feet high around this year's garden to see if it might slow down the beasts. I think it has, but old memories die hard, and this year's rabbit crop seems to remember formerly good times in the old garden as they are out and about it nearly every evening rubbing up against the fence. 

You cannot tell a male rabbit from a female without picking them up in your hand and looking for the proper equipment in the proper place. Well, unless they are in the rut, and then I will tell you from at least twenty yards away you will easily identify the female as being the one doing most of the jumping straight up into the air as she is aggressively courted by the other rabbit who does this by patiently waiting for her to return to earth, whereupon he circles her form slowly two or three times before tentatively placing one paw in the middle of her back, which immediately causes her to spring right back up into the air causing the entire process to repeat itself. 

If a male rabbit did that to me, I might react in the same way. 

I used to watch young college students in the school library act in a similar manner in another life, another time. Apparently, at some point resolution enters the process, and we all, rabbits, too, live more or less happily ever after. It's been a long time since I've seen Pam jump straight up into the air about anything. In fact, maybe it never happened. 

Anyway, watching the rabbits, I heard what sounded like a horse running through the woods down in front of our house and on Corps property that borders the Branch, brush cracking, limbs popping, our yard dogs yipping and in full pursuit. I was wrong. It wasn't a horse: It was a mule. 

Neither you, nor I, have any idea where the mule came from nor where it went. It was headed south the last time I saw it, dragging my dogs behind it like tin cans tied to a honeymoon sedan. 

There are still a few people in this country that raise and train mules to jump fences on coon hunts, and quite a few people out here keep horses. Stock fences all up and down Coyote Trail are notoriously weak and rusty. Years ago, one of my neighbors ran over a horse in the dark about a quarter mile from his home. 

Then, too, lots of people that should know better are bad about allowing their mules to have the run of their place, believing, as many old timers in my life did, that mules would not run off if left unattended and the gate open. I heard the comment often in my young life, “Don't worry about a mule leavin' ya', 'cept beatin' ya' back to the barn.”

One evening up in the Wind River Mountains of northern Wyoming, I helped Mike Hancock hobble our pack string for the night in the grass around our tent camp right at timberline. He didn't hobble the mules, and we had several. I asked him why. 

“Mules have an inferiority complex around horses. They think horses are smarter. It's the other way around. These mules will follow the horses around all night. They'll never leave them. They'll be here in the morning.” 

Here he smiled as he shook his head. “There's people like that, you know.” 

I had never had a mule's ego explained to me before, and yea these many years later, I was still thinking about it as I went back into the house. Pam was chicken frying deer steak, and looked up and asked, “How's the garden look?” 

“I don't know”, I said. “I 'bout got run over by rabbits and mules.” 

Over the years, Pam has used up several truckloads of salt while contemplating my stories, and right here she gave me an old, familiar look. 

I thought about putting my hand on the small of her back, and telling her I'd never lie to her, but I didn't. I was afraid she might jump straight up into the air. 

Copyright © 2014 Conrad M. Vollertsen