Continuing my brief summer break from politics, here's a fun article from today's local newspaper (Star Tribune) about a displaced cowboy who roped (and saved) a cantankerous bull in the nearby Minnesota countryside. This all took place in the 'backyards' of several members of liberalchurch.
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Real-life wrangler ropes a bull on loose near Elko
By Mary Jane Smetanka, Star Tribune
Last update: July 30, 2007 – 10:20 PM
For at least 11 days, the Brahma bull wandered around farms near Elko, trying to get into corrals with cows, worrying ranchers and generally making a nuisance of himself. Every time the owner showed up with a trailer to retrieve him, the bull made a beeline for the woods.
On Monday, ranchers had finally had enough. It looked like the bull's adventures might end with a bullet.
Enter Damon Rogers, cowboy and rodeo clown. Handy with a rope and canny about cows, he talks with a drawl as wide as the Texas plains. When he lived in Texas, Rogers was often called by county officials to round up wandering cattle. But things changed two years ago when he married a Mayo Clinic nurse and moved to Rochester. He still shoes horses and works as a rodeo clown, but cattle-catching calls have been few and far between.
That changed last week. Thursday at the North Dakota State Fair, Rogers lassoed a rodeo bull running loose on the midway. On Monday, he was in bed at home when he got a call saying the Elko bull would be shot unless he came immediately.
"He's a bucking bull in the pasture with other cattle, and that landowner wasn't happy," Rogers said. "They said if I wasn't there in two hours, he's history," Rogers said.
Unwanted visitor
The bull had been hanging around Cheryl and Jeff Swanson's ranch near Webster, Minn., close to the Rice County-Scott County border, for at least 11 days, Cheryl Swanson said. Her son, Daniel, first spotted the big bull when the animal jumped into a corral that held a young Angus bull and purebred Hereford cows ready to be bred.
The Swansons were not pleased to see the red-haired intruder, which had a big set of horns and weighed an estimated 1,800 pounds, almost twice as much as the Angus bull. Cheryl Swanson was worried that her cows would end up with mongrel offspring and that the Angus bull, which the Swansons do not own, might get hurt in a fight.
She suspected the escapee was from the nearby JS Rodeo Company, so she called it. But when rodeo workers came to retrieve the animal, the bull ran into the woods. Nobody went after him.
Joe Simon, owner of the rodeo company, said the animal jumped a fence. "He's a real docile bull, but pretty smart," Simon said. "He'd stay back in the trees and the woods. ... We had to wait for the right time."
That didn't please his neighbors. Cheryl Swanson said over the 11 days, the bull tried to get back to her cows, trampled her vegetable and flower gardens, and broke a barn window with his horns. She said when she called law enforcement she was told that if members of her family or animals were in danger, she could shoot the bull.
"He was getting ornerier and ornerier and ornerier," she said. "He knew the cows were [ready for breeding]." But the Swansons didn't shoot, worried that a stray bullet could hurt someone else.
Going slow to be fast
On Monday, when the bull trespassed onto another ranch, Rogers was called. When the wrangler arrived, the bull was lying in the shade with a herd of cows while people waited with a gun, a trailer and horses. Rogers, who said he is a descendant of cowboy humorist Will Rogers, looked at the situation and thought of his father.
"My old daddy's been dead for almost 20 years now and I still hear him talking to me and saying, 'If you slow down, you'll be fast,' " he said. "I just tried to slow down and be fast and let it happen."
Worried the bull would bolt, Rogers shot it with two tranquilizer darts and got a rope around the horns. When the bull was alert enough to walk, horseback riders escorted him to the trailer that would take him home.
"You don't want to have a fight with them," Rogers said. "You want them as peaceful as can be."
Simon said he was glad to have the bull back. "I'll give him a higher fence," he said.
Rogers said he "had a blast" catching the bull. But he aches to return with his wife to "cow country," where the life is slower and his skills are in demand.
"I married a Yankee, and I don't fit in," he said. "I've had fun this last week. Maybe it's an omen, God telling me it's time to go back."
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I hope Rogers and his wife work out their geographical and cultural differences and can live happily ever after...like the bull!
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