Mule

My (ex-)cowboy alway wanted a mule.

I heard a lot about mules but we have never owned one, in large part because of me. We just about owned a zonkey once. That’s a Zeebra/donkey cross.

At a horse auction one time they brought one in with a pack saddle snubbed up tight to a big sturdy gelding. The idiot I’m married to bid $50. I about had a fit. Luckily the lady behind us bid $100. After the auctioneer said sold he asked her how long she had been happily married. She told him and he hinted that was about about to end (because of her purchase of this zonkey.

But that’s not the story I was really thinking off. Somewhere I read about using mules down in mines. They said horses couldn’t stand it so they used mules. The writer said hoisting them down in to the mine was a tricky business and he always felt sad to see them go down knowing they would never see daylight again. They would die down there.

He said mules would do it but they always had something they insisted on: being fed at a precise time, or only worked so long, maybe it was something as simple as the handle on their water bucket being turned the same way. If they had what they wanted the would suffer the conditions in the mine and do the work. If not, well they couldn’t be forced to do anything.

I’m kind of feeling part mule, like there are certain things I have to have: Blue and Pic.