Maverick

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We were on Interstate 5, about two hundred miles north of San Francisco, on our way to a new job, when we decided to stop and stretch our legs. We were on a high hill that afforded us a wide view of the valley below. A cattle roundup was in progress. A cattle train had been pulled off to a siding and was being loaded. A huge herd of cattle lay in the distance. We observed the loading process. Two cowboys on horseback would cut about thirty steers from the main group and herd them to the loading platform, where two other cowboys on foot steered them onto and up the loading ramp next to the waiting frieght car.

As we watched, my wife and I considered the cattle's fate. Were they aware they were going to certain death, did they even understand the meaning of death? Did any of them understand the concept of being "free". "Oh, look at that one", my wife said, as one steer broke from the pack just before being loaded and ran back to the main herd.

We watched the same steer break and rejoin the main group again and again. In a flash of insight, we both understood how the term "maverick" came into being, as we got into our car to join our herd up north.

-- Watcher7 (anon@anon.com), September 25, 1999

Answers

Kewl story. That maverick steer must have been a GI.

-- semper paratus (llmcl@usa.net), September 25, 1999.

Watcher7--We are all part of the human herd, I think Leska calls us the "humanimal." A cow doesn't think like humanimals, they don't reason out situations, they just consume and fart all day. Come to think of it, there's lots of humanimals that do that all day too. At least cows provide many different byproducts such as milk, butter, cheese, shoes, belts, and hamburgers to name just a few. Without cows, McDonalds, Burger King, and millions of restaurants would be out of business. There's plenty of animal rights activists that would love to see the slaughtering of any animal for human consumption be stopped. It would put millions of people out of work if this were to happen. The seed company, the farmer who grows the grain, the farmer who raises the animals, chemical companies, meat packers, truckers, food processors (Swansons TV Dinners), butchers, restaurants, and supermarkets would become mini-markets. That's how I would have looked at the round up Watcher, because if Y2K turns out to be a catastrophe, this is just one little segment of the economy that will be hurt like a million other's. I wonder how many people think about this when they bite into a hamburger at McDonalds?

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), September 25, 1999.

Bardou:

Good points. I'd add that many of the "animal rights" crowd would not hesitate to use violence to achieve their ends. I believe that some of them have already done so in attacks on research labs, and people buying fur coats.

-- Bryan (Grey@Grey.com), September 25, 1999.


Not only animal right activists, but tree huggers too. While I do believe that our forests need to be micromanaged, it's terrible that these humanimals think more of tree than a human being. One tree hugger fell out of a redwood tree recently and was killed. How ironic heh? Hmmm, they could make a Twlight Zone episode out of that one.

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), September 25, 1999.

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