Friday, July 25, 2008

Last night Chad and I went to a rodeo to watch my boss and his sons compete, They do calf roping, anyone familiar with that? Apparently the goal is to wrap your hard, scratchy rope around the delicate neck of the sweet cow, jump off your horse, tackle the innocent baby that is running for its life, pick it up, throw it on the ground and then tie 3 of it's feet together, while it lays there, crying for its mother.
We thought he was going to be in the actual rodeo, but he ended up being in the slack, which means he had to wait until the entire rodeo was over to compete because there were so many entries that they couldn't all compete during the rodeo. There were probably 40 people in the slack, but he was near the beginning. Now my boss is actually really good at roping, and his sons are too - they win 1st or 2nd nearly everywhere they compete. But last night was not so good. The calf veered to the right after he had already let go of the rope, so it just got the calf by one of his back feet. So by the time my boss got off his horse and to the calf, he was mad. I don't think any of you have ever met my boss, but he is a big man. Like really large. I'd say an XXXL. You could easily pick him out of all the riders because he was the largest. Not like fat large, like huge large, you know? Anyway, he gets to the calf, who has probably already passed out in fear of the huge man chasing him, grabs him, slams him into the ground, ties him up and stomps out of the ring. And the cow is just laying there, crying. I could hear him crying all the way in the stands. It made me cry a little. All I could think was, "I'm so glad he isn't coming to work tomorrow!"

2 comments:

Mandy said...

Ouch! Sounds like it is painful - at least for the calf! It's nice that he has something he can do w/ his kids tho.

Anonymous said...

Most roping I have seen was not that violent....or maybe I was just more used to pushing farm animals around, now that I think about it.....that is just the way you get when you deal with DUMB animals everyday. And believe me -some of them are REALLY dumb!

MUM