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LaTigresse -> RE: Meat lover vs 1 cowardly vegan (8/6/2008 12:44:14 PM)
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Actually it is a very funny story.
I've had horses off and on most of my life. At the time of the "mule incident" I was keeping my horse out where some friends of mine had their horses. We rode together all the time, they were old family friends. Lots of fun stuff like cutting wood for the winter, deer hunting together (he gave me my colt 45 peacemaker revolver and taught me how to shoot and hunt with it), camping, and just really enjoying each other's company.
Somehow they came to own two mules. No one rode them. No one really did anything with them, they were just "part of the herd". All of the sudden the horses started getting out every few days. Now, trying to gather up 10ish horses and 2 mules when they can run endlessly through fields and woods is not easy. Eventually they wander back (usually) but until then, it's not easy. Especially when you do not have any horses to gather them with, because your riding horses are part of the escapees. The most frustrating part of the problem was that there was no locatable escape route. We went over that entire pasture of fencing with a fine toothed comb and found nothing! And, it is a rather remote location with no near neighbours that would be able to play tricks.
The third time this happened in just over a week, there was a witness. The most unbelievable site. The mule (who just happened to be the most difficult to catch also...) would get down on his front knees and stick his head under the fence, lift the bottom strand and crawl under THEN, because he was lonely, go unlatch the damned gate (which was easy from the outside) to either try and get back in, or let his partners loose. He got caught that time, and stopped before the rest got out. But, they could not catch him to put him back. No great loss, no one rode him or did anything with him anyway. Only one problem, he kept coming back to try and lure the rest away.
Sooooooo, the owner of said mule (and most of the other horses) got a little irrate and decided that the nearest weekend we needed to get together a mule posse. 8 of us on horseback, several armed (we had been having problems with coydogs and usually were armed when riding to dispatch that problem) chased that damned mule for over 6 hours all over western Washington County. Finally, the owner, disgusted and verrrrrryyyy pissed off, said something like "the first person that can get off a good shot at that #$%$%&#$, kill it!"
And that was the end of that troublemaking mule.
Edited to add....... I do not really enjoy killing animals. I do believe in being an omnivore and I am also cheap. Combine that with the fact that I enjoy eating the best meat I can get and sometimes that means I kill what I eat. I don't do it nearly as often as I did when I had a houseful of mouths to feed and a great deal more time to raise and process most of my food. Now I buy the beef from a local farmer, pay the butchershop in a small town nearby to process my meat and go pick it up and toss it in the deep freeze. It is much less expensive (this last side cost me a grand total of $2.30 per pound) and the taste is unbelievably wonderful.
I also eat much less meat than I did when I was younger and alot more physical in my work. Desk jobs do not require as much protein going into a 46 yo body as my lifestyle then did, going into a 20something body.
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