Pet talk

Remembering the time when I was helping blood test a herd of buffalo got me thinking about the guy who owned that ranch in Kansas.  He was a strange guy to say the least.  When it came to his buffalo, he had the most up to date innovatioon ever made for handling buffalo.  Pneumatic catch gates, 10 foot concrete walls and a circular design made working those buffalo almost fun.  But when it came to his lions, that guy was clueless.

You read that right, lions.  This ranch was also one of the largest breeders of African lions in the United States.  And I really didn’t find this out until the ranch owner graciously invited the group in for lunch.  While noshing on buffalo pot roast, mashed potatoes and gravy, 2 lion cubs were under the table begging for scraps just like most family dogs at dinner time.  Only these had real sharp, baby kitten like claws and I remember having to unhook them from my pant legs a couple of times during that meal.  But the cubs were so cute that after our testing was done I asked if I could see the rest of the lions at the ranch.  The owner was thrilled that someone from the group was interested in his beloved “pets” and agreed to give us a tour.

After packing up our blood samples and paper work, the owner dismissed the ranch hands who had been helping us and walked us down the path toward the his lion pens.  On the way toward the building, as I followed behind him, I was thinking to myself what a hard life this guy must have had.  You see, he walked with a cane, limping badly on a leg that was clearly shorter and unable to bend at the knee.  The hand that gripped the cane was missing two fingers and the other arm was unmoving as he held it to his chest.  What horrible thing did a buffalo do to this man I wondered?

As we neared the outside pens, I stopped my internal wonderings and actually started to listen to what the man was telling my friends and I.  It seems he was complaining about how hard it was to get decent help on ranches these days.  All he could get were hungry dropouts desperate to work any job until he showed them the lion pens.  Then, for some reason, they would just not show up for work anymore and he would have to scrounge around for another desperate soul willing to clean up after the animals.  Finally, he said, he just got tired of hiring people who quickly left him, and decided to clean the pens himself.  And that is the point where I finally put two and two together!  (OK so I am a little slow sometimes…..)  In building his pens, the idiot made it impossible to clean up after the animals without actually getting into the pen WITH the lions.

All those injuries and scars were inflicted by the lions when he had to clean their enclosures.  Every once and a while a lion would get angry (I never know what sets off a house cat for Gods sake, let alone a 500 pound lion), and would attack him.  These attacks resulted in the missing fingers, toes and mangled leg and arm.  No wonder good help was hard to find.  Or should I say, unbelievably dumb help?

This entry was posted on Friday, January 19th, 2007 at 2:20 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.