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Natural
selection, meaning bad winters, liver flukes, cancer eye, pneumonia, the
occasional harpoon and sunburned bags, have produced a small but hardy
beast. Maybe like some of the herds that exist today in northern Nevada or
the Gulf Coast.
I
wonder if explorers will ever discover a group of wild native cowboys
surviving in some uninhabited primeval forest in eastern Kentucky or
living in a bat cave near Carlsbad, NM? Would they have developed physical
traits suited for the life of horse and cow? Like prehensile ears to reach
up and pull their hat down when both hands are busy. Hoof-like toenails, a
large bone-spur on the back of each heel, all four fingers grown together
like a spatula to lessen the chance of dally roping injury, large callused
pads on their glutei like a mandrill baboon to soften the ride, nostril
flaps like a camel to keep out dust and burning hair.
The
female unit would do all the bartering with nomadic groups of wild native
spear and club salesmen and unscrupulous mammal buyers for feedlots in
Nebraska. Her male counterpart, dressed in his wooly mammoth chaps and
sabertooth hatpin would fix fence, break green Eohippi and rope
Triceratops for sport. His life span would be shorter than hers because of
his tendency to do dumb things.
Natural
selection has produced the ultimate organic beef up in Alaska. The process
is still going on in the subspecies of wild native cowboys. No cave
cowboy ever had to shoe his own Eohippus. Think of the branches of the
family that were eradicated while trying to shoe horses!
Other
inventions that culled out the weaker of the cowboy species were the nylon
rope, the squeeze chute, the metal gate and the fence staple.
Now
here we stand at the cusp of a new century holding our hand in front of
our face, daring anybody, "Betcha can’t hit my hand before I move
it!"
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