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Best of Lee Pitts: A wannabe cowboy in sheep’s clothing

A friend of mine owns a bar and an auction market, on the premise that at least one will always be busy. He applied the same diversification principal to his high desert ranch, running both sheep and cattle. The problem was finding good help to run the ranch while he occupied himself behind the bar.

Although he’s happily married, one day my friend was reading the personal ads in the newspaper. Next to those ads he saw an advertisement for sheepherders from South America. Liking the sound of the idea, my friend sent away the required money and soon a sheepherder arrived.

Now, usually they say there is nothing dumber than sheep except the man that tends them – but this was definitely not the case with the South American. In fact, he was a walking encyclopedia of everything ovine.

Our South American friend could drive a wagon, hitch a set of mules and knew things about sheep that weren’t common knowledge – such as, don’t name anything you might have to eat, and domestic sheep run downhill while wild sheep run uphill.

He trained his sheep dogs by taking them away from their mothers before they opened their eyes and let them suck an old ewe. He knew that a coyote’s favorite food is anything it can chew, and was also well versed in the principle of  “shoot, shovel and shut up.”

The problem was, the South American hated sheep. Like many people, he didn’t like what he was good at and wanted to be something else. In this case he wanted nothing more than to be a cowboy. So when he received his first three months’ wages, he went to Elko and spent it all on a cowboy outfit: a flat-brimmed hat like the kind the buckaroos wear, Wrangler jeans, a leather vest, high-heeled boots and a wild rag.

Now, a good cowboy uses his wild rag for many things – napkin,  handkerchief, tourniquet and washcloth, in case one is ever needed. A wild rag can also be used as a face mask for a homely date or to tie a leppy calf on your saddle. But it was never intended to be used as a shop rag.

The first day the South American showed up ragged out in his fancy doodads, the boss man asked him to check the oil in the pickup. The sheepherder proceeded to raise the hood, pull out the dipstick and check the level. The problem was, being unfamiliar with mechanical things, he failed to shut off the engine first.

When he bent over the engine, his wild rag got caught in the fan belt and our South American friend lost his wild rag, most of his hair and nearly his entire face. His hat wasn’t in too good a shape, either.

Though he was a great shepherd, he made a lousy cowboy. He couldn’t ride a rail fence in a stiff breeze and couldn’t cut a lame cow from the shade of a tree. He barely knew which end of a cow quits the ground first. But it was the pickup truck that really baffled our imitation buckaroo friend.

One day, the boss man told the South American to load up the truck with cedar logs and go plant some fence posts. The new cowboy drove the truck to the post pile, shut it off and filled up the back. When the truck was full of posts, he tried several times to start the engine but it was deader than his torn-up beaver hat.

When the boss man came home from the bar an hour later, he saw the South American sheepherder unloading the fence posts from the back of the truck and putting them back on the post pile.

“What are you doing?’ asked the boss. “You are supposed to drive out to the pasture and bury the posts in the ground.”
“I know,” said the shepherd. “Too many posts in truck. Engine won’t start.”

Readers with questions or comments for Lee Pitts may write to him in care of this publication.

7/30/2008