Spring Fever Colorado-Style

Warmer weather affects us Coloradans in a variety of ways. One day, not so long ago, the conversation went like this:

“I’ve got some Black Angus heifers.”

“Oh? You going to rent pastureland down in Alamosa?”

“No, I’m putting some electric fence up behind the house.”

“But you live on the side of a hill!”

“It’s OK, cattle can pick their way up a steep slope.”

“So when will you get them?

“They’re here already. They’re in the Great Danes’ kennel until I get them up the hill.”

“OK, I'm afraid to ask - where are the Great Danes?”

“In the cattle trailer – where else?”

“And how will you get the heifers up the hill?”


(The hill slopes on a 45 degree angle, full of boulders, pine and scrub, interspersed with cactus and yuccas. If it had a trail, a tractor might climb it. Not a cattle trailer.)

“Oh, I built this contraption. It’s pure genius.”

At this point, I should probably disclaimer this as an apocryphal e-tale.

It’s not like I would have the slightest hesitancy in acknowledging acquaintance with the sort of person who would attempt to maneuver an ornery 600-lb Black Angus up a hill using a portable corral carried by three people, two of whom have less knowledge of cattle than Billy Crystal.

“Pure genius,” the backyard rancher told me. Pure hilarity, I’m thinking.


But then I’m not the one cowboy-surfing the hill with a rope wrapped securely around one forearm, Angus-propelled and airborne, but not quite clearing the cactus. Roadburns slightly smaller than the state of Texas. And this cow was mad, not in the pathological sense, merely ornery and more than customarily put out. I’m confident the heifer is healthy, but the rancher might need some kind of testing.

Incredibly, one bovine (the smallest and most docile) was indeed ushered to her hillside paradise in this manner. As for her companions . . . well, there’s been a change of plans. Seems the grass is greener downhill, by the mailbox, where the anti-Alpine critters can be trucked.

Still, as they say, the worst day wrangling your own cattle is better than the best day warming a desk chair for somebody else.

Perhaps the backyard cowboy is the sane one, after all.