Under the Wire

I must begin today’s “Under The Wire” with a first-ever warning. At the present time, no more than 50 people are allowed to view this column at a time. If several hundred of you are gathered around to read this together, you need to lay down the paper, place your hands behind your head and slowly walk away.

There, that should take care of any liability issues that may arise in this unusual world we find ourselves living in today.

Now for the good news. I, along with many of you may become candidates for some type of medal honoring our extraordinary efforts in the areas of “social distancing, home isolation” or whatever it is they call it when we are supposed to stay home. It is spring here on our ranch and yours, too. That means calves are being born, foals on the horse operations, lambs, goats, you name it. Busy times. Times that demand we stay pretty close to home. The timing for all this could not have been better for a lot of us. Don’t need someone to tell us to stay home these days. It’s a no-brainer.

Not going to need the National Guard to make sure we stay off the city streets. More like it, the National Guard would be necessary to get me on a city street with calf tagging, moving pairs around while trying to insure they are pairs, feeding cows, an occasional bottle calf, horses not getting ridden but eating regularly anyway.

If “Big Brother” is keeping track of us out here in ranch country, USA, we should be accumulating a bunch of brownie points. Don’t have to tell us to avoid groups of 250 or more humans. I personally have no desire to belong to any organization that might draw 250 or more together. To quote Groucho Marx whom only the most “mature” may even remember, “I would not belong to any club that will have me as a member.”

I will make a personal exception to this rule if there happens to be a “stay at home” club. Might even run for president, that is, unless they require attendance at their meeting.

If there is a medal as I mentioned earlier, hope they can just mail it to me. I’m not going anywhere.