THE BITE.
When I was a teenager I met a man named Emerson. He operated a small cinder mine near the tiny town where I lived in the Mojave Desert. He scratched out a modest but successful living and supported his family, mining and shipping out truckloads of volcanic cinder for whatever purpose somewhere out there in the larger world. When we met it was short sleeve weather and I could not miss the prominent set of scars on his right forearm when he extended it to shake my hand.
There was no mistaking what they were; those were jaw marks. Two crescent shaped scars, one on the top and one on the bottom of of his muscular and sinewy arm. And so I asked him; What were those from? How did he get such dramatic marks? He smiled easily, unoffended, and told me the story.
To make a bit of extra money, he and some others would trap wild burros and sell them to slaughter houses, ostensibly for dog food. It was the 1960’s, no one cared about the desert, much less about a bunch of jackasses wandering around out there. It was perfectly legal and considered and enterprising way to supplement your income.
It was a relatively simple process. They would build a circular corral in burro country out of railroad ties or whatever was at hand. They would fashion a simple one - way gate that the burros could push open from the outside, but large springs on the hinges would shut it behind them so they could not get out. The trap was completed by putting a bale or two of hay inside, and most importantly, a full water trough. Then, they would just go away for several days and let the burros do the rest.
Burros tend to travel in family groups or small herds, and eventually they would smell and find the corral and the goodies inside. They would wander around the outside, until one of them discovered that by simply leaning on the spring loaded gate it could get inside to the relative feast of sweet hay and a huge supply of water. One by one the others would follow, until the corral would be filled with the entire herd. There was no exit.
A few days later the trappers would return with a large stock truck, load the asses in, and away they would go to the slaughter house somewhere, and the trappers would return home with their money.
The only dicey part was the actual loading process. The traps were constructed with loading chutes, a simple ramp with sturdy, high side rails that funneled the animals from the corral up into the stock truck. One of the trappers would climb into the corral opposite the loading chute, wave his arms, whistle, and generally try to spook the burros a bit. They would find the chute, consider it an escape route, and would literally run up into the waiting truck.
Here’s the thing about wild burros; they fight back. Horses, when faced with a threat will usually panic and tear off in any direction, stampeding, presumably using their speed to get away from a threat. Wild burros may run for a little bit, but when overtaken they will sometimes turn and attack their pursuer. They bite, they kick, they stomp, they roll over on top of adversaries, whatever it takes to stop the threat. They are quite capable of maiming or even killing an attacker, including humans. Catching some wild ass in the desert may be the butt of a lot of jokes, but in reality they are no joke at all when cornered.
So, one of the trappers climbs inside the corral and starts ushering the doomed animals toward the truck. All is going well, until one of the captives freezes in the loading chute and sits down, refusing to go forward or backwards, and jamming the process to a halt. No amount of yelling, cussing or swatting it with a cowboy hat will move the burro. Frustrated, Emerson climbs into the chute alone side the stubborn burro, determined to get it moving. With his left hand he grabs the burros tail, and he wraps his right arm under it’s neck and begins to yank forward on both ends. The burro bucks its’ head, and quickly reaches down and clamps onto Emerson’s forearm, and starts to bite.
The teeth quickly break through all of the dermis layers and into the muscle, and keep going. Those jaw muscles are tough and strong, used to browsing on tough, woody desert shrubs. Into and through the muscles from both sides, they are headed for the bones. They tug on the tendons connecting the muscles to the bones, and the grinding teeth just keep on grinding. The two jaws are headed for a rendezvous somewhere deep within his arm. Emerson can do nothing really except scream; he is trapped in there by the burros’ body weight, and the jaws slowly scissoring through his arm.
After many agonizing seconds, he bends down and bites the burro, hard, on the soft end of it’s nose. The startled animal bucks and lets go, long enough for Emerson to throw himself over the side and out of the chute. His friends scramble to his aid; fortunately no big blood vessels appear to have been gouged, the bones had been missed, but there was lots of muscle damage and two grotesque jaw marks on his arm.
They stop the bleeding and administer whatever first aid they can, and it becomes clear that Emerson will survive. The burro still sits contentedly in the loading chute, refusing to move.
Emerson, once he is patched up and the excitement is over, isn’t done with this jackass. He goes to his truck, gets his 30 - 30 rifle , returns to the loading chute and shoots the burro in the head. No one objects. They drag the dead animal out of the chute and continue their task until it is complete. Emerson then butchers the burro, and that night they all eat it for dinner. True story. You know what they say about paybacks…
No comments:
Post a Comment