Tuesday, April 12, 2016

They call him woollllyyyyy...Wooly Booger!

At Chris Muir's Day by Day cartoon, the gang at the Double D ranch are infiltrated by anti-Trump protestors (really just rabble rousers paid by Bernie's money man). They are met pretty angrily by the resident bad-ass Texas Longhorn bull known as Tabasco who was fitted with a warning bell, and I got to remembering old Wooly Booger.


I grew up along the shore of Lake Okeechobee where our rented house was surrounded by a small, about 12-15 acre pasture where the landlord (a big boss at US Sugar Corp.) kept his little hobby herd, maybe 20-25 mixed breed cows lorded over by Ol’ Wooly Booger*.

See, USSC in addition to its cane plantations and mills was at that time a major player in the champion Brahma Bull world, with operations in Australia, Costa Rica, and right there on the Big O. They did some breeding experiments too, and Wooly was a hu-mon-gous Brahma/Angus mix…a Brangus, and he was one mean ol’ sumbitch. Get into *his* pasture, especially anywhere near *his* cows, and your life was truly in danger. No horns, just a huge curly-maned head, with shoulders and chest like a double or triple sized buffalo. And he was fast; he could be on you all the way from the other side of the pasture before you knew it, so you had better stay within a few yards of the board ‘n bobwahr fence, which he could have easily ran right through, but he knew his domain was inside its borders and you were safe if you stayed outside.

So Mr. Stacy put a big old cowbell on Wooly Booger as a warning for us five young 'uns out there, and when you were playing ball or whatever in that pasture and had your back turned and you heard that thing clanging, you better drop everything and head for that fence as fast as you could go. Only Mr. Stacy dared stand up to that bull, he was a huge man and he carried a big lead pipe with him when he was out of the truck; I think that bought him some mutual respect from Wooly, even though he could have easily stomped him down. I saw the bull prove that point one time when Mr. Stacy drove his company car into the pasture and the bull did not like that one bit, so he butted the front of that car head on and it seemed like lifted the front wheels clean up off the ground, then one time rammed it from the side caving in the whole side of that new chevy biscayne (like I said though, Stacy was a big shot and he had a new car I think the very next day).

Anyway. A bell on a big ol’ bull has a very practical purpose, and pays to pay heed, whether rowdy kids playing in the pasture or those dirty hippies doing their dirty deeds.

*Named by my Dad for his massive and mean curly-headed countenance way before the old song song Wooly Bully came out…we lived out there when I was 8 to 13, 1963-68, and the song by Sam and the Shams was I think in '65, but it sure seemed to have been written especially for ol’ Wooly Booger...maybe my Dad should have gotten royalties!

2 comments:

Carl Belken said...

We did not have Brahma cattle on my dads farm but I'll never forget the one crazy Angus cow we had when I was a kid. That thing did not like little kids. Dad eventually wound up selling it. Most of the few cattle we had were mixed breed. I was always told to never turn your back on an Angus.

Best cow we ever had was a Guernsey/Jersy mix. She was our milk cow. I'd be milking her and when she was done with her feed she'd turn her head and start licking me on my arm. Dad bought her from a farmer who had a bunch of kids who had bottle fed her.

Anonymous said...

Now THAT's a first. A Thai advertisement for a woman's clinic. That clinic would never fly here as it don't appear to offer abortions.