Goat Whiskers the Younger sent in a worm sample to the Mission Screwworm Control Center from a ram's horn a week after his shearing operation. Whiskers knew beforehand the sample was probably not screwworm; however, he dates back to the olden days to the peak of the raging pestilence that killed hundreds of thousands of livestock and kept many a man on horseback all summer long.

In the wet spring of 1948, the Big Boss and his cousin Lake Tankersley dehorned the Hereford calves at the old ranch in a flurry of western antics of squirting blood, boiling dust, and splintering plants. Lake and the Boss took extended leaves of absence as soon as the western drama ended. By May, all those calves fell victim to a screwworm epidemic of monstrous proportions. The day school ended, Young Whiskers and my brother joined myself and the foreman to flank the smaller calves and ground bulldog the bigger ones every other day of the week.

Whiskers and my brother, being lightweight 11 year-olds, alternated holding the hind legs and carrying a bucket of bacon grease and a bottle of worm killer. The foreman tried heeling the heaviest calves, but our team was too small to put a heavy enough jerk on the tail and the rope at the same time.

Very few of the calves healed until frost. Several died of hemorrhaging from the deep head wounds right out of the gate. We stayed behind, though another crew of cowboys checked the water and doctored whatever they found around the windmills. By fall, we dispersed for school and college. I don't recall how many days my brother and Young Whiskers helped; but whatever the timespan, they left the doctoring pens much wiser young gentlemen in the art of avoiding being kicked and stepped on by whiteface calves.

Must have been a curse or an evil shadow cast over the minds of the range bosses that spring, because up on one of the big cow outfits in the north of the county, they also marked and dehorned six weeks later than usual. Only consolation we had working over in the railroad shipping pens was neighbors stopping in and reporting that the big ranch was having to "run the wagon" to doctor their cattle.

Whiskers wasn't being overly cautious to send in the sample. The winter has been so warm, cattle sprayed for lice in late January already had hornflies swarming on their backs. We had a calf bitten by a rattlesnake in February, about two months early for rattlers to be active. We marked our calves close to schedule. But I put off branding one little bunch, remembering the only cause of death for insects on warm winters is old age. With the flies already eating on the mothers, any letter or number on a calf's hide is not only going to blotch, but become a landing field for half the hornflies in the pasture.

Only one steer so far has had to be doctored for a blood clot from castration. The guy feeding penned him last week. Took one loop to catch one heel in a pen that suddenly became huge and impossible to find a post to dally to. I had to take a wrap up on the pipe rail above a diamond mesh wire. The height must have given us an advantage, as my assistant jerked him down by his tail the first try.

In the struggle, the rope was tight enough on his hind leg to stop him from kicking. Keep in mind, no flagman timed how long we spent tying three feet with a cotton rope pigging string. Don't bother also to ask how much my lap got in my way holding his head down with my right knee and folding his front leg back to hold against my left knee. Had I been granted a wish, I'd have asked to bring back the old devil who used to hit us on the knuckles with the back of his pocketknife for not holding a calf or lamb to suit him, to see how he liked working so shorthanded your shadow is your only companion.

We took time holding the head and working on the back end. Shock worked to our advantage. The calf kept still until we gave him a shot of antibiotic. But I think the main reason he began to fight was that we were both straining so hard and grunting so loud, he must have thought we were wild hogs preparing to eat him.

By midweek, we'll have to doctor the calf a second time. A rematch is going to be harder on the cowboys than the calf now that he knows the score. Young Whiskers is too seasoned to come help. And I hadn't thought of this before, but after my brother helped us that summer, he never looked back until he finished graduate school ...

March 16, 2000