Howdy friends and neighbors. Oh man, we have been busy sowing wheat, weaning calves and praying for rain. What?? Praying for rain? Yeah, we’re dry as usual while the rest of the state gripes about being too wet. That’s life out here next to the one-hundredth meridian.
Someone needs to contact the Animal Planet TV network. I have discovered that I’m a skunk whisperer. The other day while I was having one of those days; I had a small gas engine quit on the grain cart I use to transfer wheat from the bin to my grain drill. So, my options were to get a bucket and a scoop shovel or rob another 6 horse power engine off of a small cattle sprayer I had. So, I looked at the scoop, started to dial my wife on my “more bars, more places hip phone,” and decided to rob the other engine instead. It was in my Grandmothers barn so off I went with a 9/16 and a ½ inch wrench to avoid having to ask my wife to scoop wheat seed thus saving my marriage while decommissioning my sprayer. There is probably a Proverb that says something like “unwise man should not ask loving wife to scoop wheat.” That would be the western Oklahoma farmer/rancher translation.
Anyhow, I was fully concentrating on a ½ inch nut that was at that point where it was too loose for a ratchet but too tight for fingers. You gear heads know what I’m talking about. It’s some kind of bolt and nut utopia where they get to laugh while we go back and forth from wrench to fingers to pliers and then back to the wrench. Plus, they always occur in tight, hard to reach places.
So there I was, bent over in a semi-dark barn hallway, swatting mosquitoes and telling this bolt how much I didn’t like it when I came face to face with ole Pepé Le Pew. This skunk snuck up behind me while I was totally involved with the Briggs and Stratton. As I turned, our eyes met. He was about six feet from me. I just started whispering “don’t you spray, don’t you dare spray!” That little stinker looked at me for about half a day, or 4 to 5 seconds, nodded his head up and down and then went on his way! I was literally just feet from needing a bath in tomato juice when that varmint decided he better go one his way. When Pepé was at a safe distance I made a dash for the truck to search for a gun. I was in my dad’s work pickup so after I dug and pulled out from behind the seat three coats, four old Penny News papers, a roll of paper towels, an electric fence tester that doesn’t work, 30 feet of nylon lariat rope, a wore out Feist Area Wide phone book, a roll of toilet paper (I kept that close because I needed it next) an Ivomec injection syringe with rubber hose, and something my four year old picked up somewhere, I found the .22 rifle. But no bullets! Oh well, by now my grandmother had come down to the barn to tell me Pepé was long gone.
I’m guessing he sensed that I had been in a thirty-minute battle with a ½ inch stubborn bolt and nut, mosquitoes, a rancher’s aft cab collection, and he decided to leave out in a hurry. I knew animals could sense fear, but I didn’t know they could sense and avoid an on-coming tool-throwing fit!
I just thank the good Lord that I was in my dad’s truck. If I had been in mine, chances are I would have had a few cow dogs with me. Then chances would have been really good that the cow dogs and I would have smelled like we just got back from Washington D.C.!
I’m Monte Tucker, and that is what’s under my skunk whispering hat!
What's Under My Hat 