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Since it's hard to symbolize the wind or those big open spaces on a license plate, it's easy to understand why Wyoming put a bucking bronco topped by a cowboy on its tags. And it's also easy to understand why People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals recently asked the Equality State to change its plates, since PETA loves publicity more than it cherishes critters.
The equine icon, according to PETA coordinator Kristie
Sigmon, is a throwback to old times when cowboys didn't
have anything better to do that abuse their stock in the
evenings.
My personal knowledge here is rather limited, although there is some. My maternal grandfather, Byron Wollen, homesteaded on two sections 17 miles northeast of Bill, Wyo., which had the closest paved road, telephone and electricity.
We visited his ranch often during my boyhood, and some years my father and my brothers and I would join the fall round-up at the summer pasture at the Thunder Basin National Grassland, about 50 miles north of the ranch.
After the round-up came the cattle drive. The only difference between this one and those you see in movies is that we were never beset by rustlers or Lakota, and our chuckwagon was actually a pickup with a camper where the cook held forth.
We stopped at each spread along the way to cut out that rancher's cattle, and my grandfather's place was next to last, so it was a multi-day job -- an exhausting dusty job when you're a saddle-sore city kid riding drag (though when I was 16 I got promoted to flanker, to the jealousy of my younger brothers).
Granted, we kids were just along for the ride. But we
were constantly around grown men who made this their
livelihood. This was more than 30 years ago, so my memory
may have slipped, but at no time, after the cattle were
bedded down and we had our bedrolls spread after fording
the Cheyenne River at the Old Fiddleback Ranch, do I recall
any of the professionals making remarks like Now that
the day's chores are done, what say you we go abuse some
livestock this evening?
For that matter, I've never met a cowboy, stockman, shepherd, rodeo contractor, burro breeder or llamaroo who promoted the abuse of livestock -- as they see it, their job is to tend livestock. To put this another way, people who get up at three o'clock on a subzero morning in February to go pull calves are probably not people who get off on abusing animals.
Not that anything like the truth will stop PETA from saying stupid things. It's the outfit which has never protected so much as an acre of wildlife habitat, but constantly attacks hunters and anglers -- people who tap their own pockets, through license fees and excise taxes on firearms, ammunition and fishing gear, to preserve and expand wildlife habitat.
Apparently, PETA sees the Wyoming buckaroo, not as a morning ritual on a cattle drive as horse and rider come to an agreement about who's in charge, but as a promotion for rodeo, which in PETA's eyes is a barbaric sport which no one should enjoy.
This brings to mind the 150-year-old observation by
Thomas Babington Macauley about the cruel pastime of
bear-baiting, where dogs were set upon a chained bear in an
English arena. The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not
because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave
pleasure to the spectators.
If PETA cared about featherless bipeds, it might object to rodeo on humane grounds; I've never known a rodeo performer who didn't break something important.
Wait, I'll have to take that back. One year at the Middle Park Fair rodeo in Kremmling, when we owned the newspaper there, a bronc rider went straight up, then plunged straight down head first.
I had a great picture of the landing, but since he'd been hauled comatose to the waiting ambulance, I figured I'd better check on his condition when I was putting the newspaper together on the following Tuesday. After all, the dive might have killed or permanently crippled him, and then even I would have deemed the picture in bad taste.
He wasn't in the local hospital, which made me fear for
the worst, except they had no record that he had ever been
in the hospital. I got hold of Dr. Ernest Doc
Ceriani.
As soon as he came to, we just took a look at
him,
Doc said, and sent him on his way. He walked
out.
I was astonished. The way the cowboy had landed, I figured a broken neck, snapped spine or fractured skull.
Maybe for a normal person,
Doc said, but this
was a rodeo cowboy. You're not going to harm one of those
by banging his head -- it's not a part of them that they
need or use.
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