A Fool Ropes a Badger
- June 4, 2024
- |
- Jan Swan Wood
Posted in: Featured, Ranch Life
We had received the steers for the summer grazing season and were trailing them to their pasture from
the pens. The ranch that had sent them to grass had sent a couple of guys to help us get them to pasture. Their names were Tim, a very conservative ranch manager, and Billy, the wildest cowboy that maybe ever drew a breath. They were both good hands and the steers were going to be no problem.
As we were moving the steers along, a badger got stirred up. The steers gave it a pretty wide berth and kept walking. Billy, however, couldn’t resist a chance to do something besides quietly trailing steers along, so he roped the badger. It went rapidly downhill from there.
The backstory on Billy’s horse will help you understand why things got pretty wild after the badger was roped. The owl headed gelding had blown up and put on a bucking demonstration when Billy had gotten on him that would have made any stock contractor proud. Billy had ridden him with ease, never missing a beat in his conversation. By the look in the horse’s eye when he finally threw his head up, we all knew this skirmish was not going to be the last and that old Sorrelly was laying for Billy.
So, that said, when that badger realized he was roped, he didn’t take the news well. Bowed up, fuzzed
up and snarling, he built to Billy’s horse, who understandably, wasn’t in favor of getting chewed on by a
badger and decided to leave the country as fast as he could. Billy stopped the runaway, so the next thing on the agenda was to try to buck Billy off so the badger could bite the guy responsible for his problems.
This scene played out over and over, with the runaways both forward and in reverse, with neither the
badger or Billy’s horse showing any sign of giving up. The rest of us stayed well away from this rolling train wreck and kept the steers walking. Billy was still trying keeping his side of the steers moving, though he was pretty involved with surviving being tied to a badger on a bucking horse. Even Billy finally got tired of his own shenanigans, so he started looking for some relief.
I was riding closest to him and Billy hollered at me to rope the badger so he could get his rope back. In my most reasonable Mom tone, I told him he was on his own and that I didn’t see my brand anywhere on that badger, therefore not making it my responsibility, and if he wanted his rope back he could figure that out on his own. It’s the Mom in me that feels the best lessons are ones you figure out for yourself. The ones that hurt are usually remembered the longest.
By this time, his broncy horse had wrapped and unwrapped them in the rope several times, made the
badger angrier, if possible, and had even disrupted our steer drive a bit. If Billy hadn’t been as handy as he was, he’d have been killed several times by this point. I was thinking it was a stupid stunt and that he
might just learn something if he had to figure his own way out of it. Cause and effect, you know.
As we kept getting further from Billy with our steer drive, Tim, kind soul that he was, finally rode back to help him. I guess he didn’t want to haul pieces of Billy and the sorrel horse back to the ranch later, or something. So, getting his rope down, one that he’d just gotten and hung on his saddle for it’s debut ride, Tim roped the badger. It took quite a few tries to get another loop on him with Billy’s already there
and the badger fraunching around,but it finally settled around the badger’s mid section. The badger wasn’t made happier by this development, but had to go along with getting stretched out. Billy’s loop was around the badger’s neck and one front leg, so there was no way to choke the badger.
With Tim’s rope holding the badger tight, Billy was finally able to get off, and by keeping the rope tight, was able to get up to the seething badger, hold him down with his boot, and with a quick grab, get ahold of his hondo and pull his loop loose, thereby releasing the badger from his possession and turning him over to Tim. Before he could get Tim’s rope off, the badger spun around and made a run at Tim’s horse. I heard Tim suggest loudly that Billy needed to get his rope off too. Billy finally got back on his horse, who was nearly as upset as the badger, and was trying to re-rope the badger, when the steers walked on over the ridge and we kept following them out of sight.. My opinion was that adding one more fool with a rope to the equation wasn’t going to help the badger deal and if they were still going round and round when we returned later, maybe we would offer some help.
It must have been a half hour before Tim and Billy caught up with us. Billy was still grinning and laughing, but Tim was not. The badger had stranded his new rope in several places so he was going to
have to trim off about 20 feet to re-tie his hondo. Tim, always easy going, had a clenched jaw and was
absolutely simmering. Anyone else might have just killed Billy by that time.
Billy asked me why I hadn’t helped him when he asked and I told him that two stupids didn’t make a smart and that I had at no time in my life ever felt the need to rope a badger, also, that I had it on good authority that badgers never gave the rope back when some fool was done playing. Of course, I didn’t let Tim hear me say that.
Related Posts:
Posted in: Featured, Ranch Life
About Jan Swan Wood
Jan was raised on a ranch in far western South Dakota. She grew up horseback working all descriptions of cattle, plus sheep and horses. After leaving home she pursued a post-graduate study of cowboying and dayworking in Nebraska, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota....