lot of how i met mouse

Howdy!  This is how I meet mouse.

There is a place out there to the west where a little fellar, that I know as Mouse was born and raised.  At the north end and a little bit west of the Great Salt Lake there is what’s left of an old Rail Road Town of Kelton.  Now I was about sixteen and rancher friend of mine who had some eighty head of beef free roaming out there, invited me to join the round up.  Weekend roundups were always lots of fun and I got to play cowboy and they always put out a good meal BBQ steak and all the fixens. We all call the place the west desert rather than Kelton.  There not much of anything good out there, just salt grass, alkali,  horn toad, rattle snake, sage brush, ticks and scorpions, and the ghost town of kelton and it is hotter than a lime kiln. It was about a 100 degrees’ in the shade and there ain’t any.  In its day kelton was a one wild town. Filled with saloons and marriage houses, you see there was some law against brothels, so the enterprising folks of kelton had the marriage houses where a fellar could get hitched for five bucks and then go over to the court house and get divorce for fifty cents.  They tell me that there was a marriage the lasted a whole week. Any way the old tail of Kelton hay days make for some fun camp fire stories.

I was out looking for cattle to get headed back to the herd when I spotted some cotton tails running thru the sage brush. Now back then in august you don’t eat rabbits but there was a bounty on them and two dollars bounty and a dollar for the pelt. Well I got down off that ranch horse as I had never shot a gun from his back and some horses don’t exactly like having a gun fired around him or form their backs.  I stated off in to the sage when I spotted him. That little fist size ball of fur laying there Panting twitching.  I did not know what the heck I was looking at. His ears were not long like a rabbit, they were round about the size of a dime.  He did not have but a stub of a tail.  Now I did something that you should not do with a strange wild animal and that is I bent over and pick it up. It looked more dead than alive. I look him over and he did not look like a rat or a mouse or a ground squirrel. I just did not know what the heck he was. I took my bandana and wet it down and made a lean-to and laid him in the shade of it.  I got into my saddle bag a got out the trail mix and offered him a dried apple chip; he was sitting up in the cool shade of the bandana, not trying to run off as I thought he might.  I put down some water in a bottle cap for him to drink, and then back off and sat down to watch him. Well he made short work of the apple chip and I could see he was making a speedy recovery.

 I could hear the foreman calling me, he wanted to know if I was all right and what he really wanted me back on the horse and looking for cattle.  Well I was getting ready to leave and that darn critter came right up my pant leg to my vest pocket after the apple chips and there was no stopping him.  Just then the foreman rode up and started to tell me that I was out here to be rounding up cattle not playing around or sitting on my rear. He was a little more pacific.  When I could get a chance to say my piece I showed him the critter that has now made a home in my vest pocket.  The foreman tells me that it is a Pika mouse and he want  to know how I caught one, their fastest critter on four legs out there. I think there was a put down in there somewhere. Well I got mounted and started back to flushing cow out of the brush. You know when you find a cow you got to get him head to the herd and we generally make some noise to spook out of the brush and keep them moving. You whistle or crack a bull whip and yell. And some of the fellar’s have a leather popper on the loose end of the lariat, Anything to make some noise, now I was one that did a lot of whistling and popping my lariat.  I had found three head of yearling and started pushing them out to the herd. Whistling and making some noise. Then I heard a loud high pitch whistle come from my vest pocket.  It was that mouse in my pocket and he sure could make noise. I t worked on the cows alright sending them at a trot headed the right direction.  The other hands were getting a charge out of my saddle pal and the
 foreman proclaimed him as the best wrangler on the roundup.

Well that’s how Mouse and I meet a long time ago. He can find more ways to get me and him into more trouble than any ten people that I can name. Now we ride the internet all over the blog-a-sphere and see how much trouble we can get into.

Thank you for stopping by and God bless.