Spooky Horses, Amorous Llamas
Unfortunate Combination On Ice

By Curt Brummett

In the language of cowboy, there are several ways to describe different situations. I know this simply because I have been in several situations.

For example, Easy (hot-blooded idiot horse) and me got into a situation one afternoon that involved an emu.

That particular type of situation would be described as a "wreck," "jackpot," or "major terrible situation."

Well, Easy and me has been in some major wrecks, some better than average jackpots, and as of last month, at least one "MAJOR TERRIBLE SITUATION."

You see, people, old Easy doesn't accept life as life itself. Fact of the matter is, he doesn't accept life at all. He's always looking for some way to change it, or on occasion, something that's gonna change him.

I wouldn't swear to it, but I think he thinks anything and everything is out to eat him alive. But the main problem with old Easy is, what might get 'im he don't notice, and what could possibly attack him he doesn't see because he's worried about the small stuff.

The small stuff being anything that has nothing to do with what is actually going on.

Like the other day.

We were riding on the west end of the north side of the feedyard and had managed to get through all of the trucks and front-end loaders with a minimum of stampedes. It was semi-icy and a way yonder cold.

Easy was pretty fresh and hunting wooly boogers. Well, folks, he found one. Not just one, but about nine of 'em. Fact of the matter is, I found 'em about the same time he did.

Monti and his little buckskin mare noticed it too. Within about a millisecond, we were plumb back to where we started from, that being about half a mile from where the spookers spooked the spookies.

Yep, there was babies crying, dogs barking and women screaming in the streets. Not to mention two cowboys trying to get two horses shut down before we reached San Angelo.

Did you know that when llamas get in a romantic mood, they chase each other around while making a sound that's kinda like a gut-shot mountain lion crossed with some idiot dragging his fingernails on a chalkboard?

We heard the noise before we saw what was causing it.

The idiot who owns the pasture that borders the north side had put some llamas in it. I would almost swear that I seen a man with a video camera in a pickup as Easy and me made a rather quick reverse move.

As I said, we had managed to get by all the trucks and heavy equipment, which had made old Easy and Buttermilk a little nervous. But when those horses heard those llamas, things kinda went to hell in a handbag.

The first thing they did was stop, raise their heads, cock their ears and get nervous while trying to locate the weird noise.

It didn't take long to locate the noise. We was side-stepping, looking out into the pasture, passing a self-feeder that was blocking the view. About the time we got to the end of the feeder, Dr. Doolittle's whole damn herd of llamas came around the same end.

In a very short amount of time, there was two horses hauling freight to get anywhere but where they had been, two cowboys wondering if they were gonna survive the turn on ice, and a grain truck that just happened to hit his air brakes as we got even with the tires.

The air brakes got the stampede stopped, but they caused a fence-jumping. I ended up in a pen of fat cattle, Monti was somewhere down around Dimmitt, and old Easy was trying to camouflage hisself as a fat steer.

All of this happened about a month or so ago. To this day, I can't ride by that self-feeder without the possibility of a runaway. Old Easy and Buttermilk get along okay when they see the llamas; they get nervous, but they also get past the feeder as quick as possible.

Each time we go by the feeder, I wish for total silence. I don't know how often llamas get romantic, don't really care. But I do wish they would hold the noise down.

Makes me nervous, not to mention old Easy and Buttermilk.