Hello to All:
It has been a quiet week out here. There was supposed to be a huge storm one night with damaging winds and large hail and torrential rain that posed a flooding problem. The damaging wind must have pushed the rain to the North of us.
At lease we were spared the hail. The rain would have been nice. To borrow a quote from one of my favorite authors, Elmer Kelton, “I have run out of ways to say It sure is dry out here”. If you are not already an Elmer Kelton fan, read one of his books and you will be. A good book to start with is “The Time it Never Rained”. Those of us who grew up out here in West Texas will be nodding their heads “yeah” all the way through the book.
Not a lot of action out here. One day I was over at Dale Herring’s house. As I walked up the front walk, I saw a skunk walking around the house. I hurriedly went in and told Dale about the skunk. I stood in the back door to keep watch and Dale went to get his .22 rifle. It was one that he has had forever. A little pump that fires 22 shorts. He handed it to me to perform the deed of terminating the skunk with extreme prejudice. About then his dog came running up and making like he was going to attack the skunk. For the next few minutes I was yelling at the dog to “get back” and trying to keep a good distance away from the skunk. If you are down wind, a hundred foot is not enough. Then I took careful aim and pulled the trigger. A plume of fur shot up and the skunk kept walking. Ok, aim a bit more for the center of the critter. Same thing, a bit of fur flies up and the skunk keeps on walking. ‘Nuff is ‘nuff…I got up next to a tree and used it to steady the rifle and got as fine a bead as I could and fired. The skunk finally went down. I let it lay there for a couple of hours before I went to check if it was dead. Still smelled bad. Whew! Took a plastic bag and a stick and poked it into the bag, tied it up tight and took it to be disposed of a long ways off. Thought I was a better shot than that but when I poked it with the stick I found out that the skunk was not much meat and a lot of fur.
So it goes in our quiet little corner of Coleman County.
Talpa Bob
