Hershey Stains

Now that I've been forced into the blogosphere, I think it's only fitting that I make another post. That way, we can all still make fun of JG for not updating hers...

For those of you who don't know, I'm in the cattle business. During the summer, that means there are days spent moving those cattle around to various places and parts of the vast range, and that is the setting for our next little tale. I wasn't there for this little escapade, but I'll relay the tale precisely as it was told to me.

Picture if you will, the high desert range... What? None of you have ever seen the high desert range? *sigh* Ok... look at the following picture.

There, got it? Coincidentally, this story takes place right here.

We have what is termed a group allotment. That means, in our case, that there are 4 different cattle outfits that share this same range. We mix all of our cattle together and move them around as one big herd, pooling our efforts and resources when the time comes to do anything. While over 120 years have gone by since my Great-Grandfather's cattle first started using this range, pretty much nothing has changed in the way that things have been done out here except in the last 20 years or so. The first real improvement was the widespread use of horse trailers in the mid 80's. The next major improvement was when we invested in hand held walkie talkies. Believe it or not, that probably has been the most labor saving device ever invented for what we do, and is the crux for this tale.

The radios we all bought were Motorola SP50's. They weren't that big, about 3 inches wide, 10 inches high, and an inch thick. Here take a look. On the front where the speaker is, you can see that there are little slots or grooves in the plastic so that the sound can escape. Ok... on with the tale.

There was a whole crew that showed up to ride that morning, but my older cousin, B, forgot to bring his radio. One of the other guys, M, had brought two, so B borrowed one of his. B didn't like using the belt clip, so he just stuck the radio into his coat pocket and they started the ride. About 3 hours into the ride, they came to where the picture is, but everyone was spread out, and communicating by radio, so no one could see anyone else.

B reached into his pocket to get on the radio and call someone, when he discovered that he'd left a chocolate bar in that same pocket. By then, the chocolate had melted and had run into the grooves where the speaker was, filling them in with a brown sticky substance. It was at this point that the cowboy humour in B kicked in, and the story moved into high gear. B picked up a small twig off of a sagebrush, and started cleaning the melted chocolate out of the grooves while formulating his story. As you can see from the picture, there aren't a lot of restroom facilities in that neck of the woods, so when you gotta go, well... you just go. We always carry a pocket full of tp for just such an occasion, so it's a common occurrance. After a few more minutes of plotting, he finally sprung his trap. B got on the radio and said:

B: "M, you're not gonna believe this..."
M: "What."
B: "I had to get off and take a dump, and when I stood back up, your radio fell out of my pocket and landed in the pile of shit."
M: "It WHAT?"
B: " I said it fell out of my pocket and landed in the pile of shit. "
M: Silence
B: "Don't worry, though. I wiped it off as best as I could. There's just some stuck in these little speaker grooves that I can't get out."
M: "Ok, we'll just trade radios when we get back to your place. You can keep that one, and I'll take yours."
B: "I don't want this one, it's got shit on it."
M: "I don't want it either."
B: "Oh, stop your whinin'... it's not that bad. And it is your radio..."

And for the next two hours this conversation went back and forth as the rest of the riders howled with laughter.

When they all finally made it back to the pickups and trailers, B walked over to M with the radio stuck out in his hand giving it back to him, but he might as well have had ahold of a rattlesnake for all the room that M was giving him.

M: "You just keep it."
B: "Oh, ya big baby, take your damn radio..."
M: "Take it home and clean it up first."
B: "I ain't cleanin' it up, it's your radio."
M: "I ain't the one that shit on it!"
B: "That was an accident, here."

So M puts his gloves back on and picks up the radio with his thumb and forefinger. He gives it the once over, and can see the little brown caught up in the top of the grooves. At this point he really didn't know what to do next, so he gave it a sniff to see if there was any salvage on it...

M: "That's chocolate! You sonofa..."