Saturday, April 27, 2013

Rattlesnake Wire

Barbed wire...or "bob woir", as it is pronounced in East Texas...has served the southwest well since it was first patented in 1867. As a relatively inexpensive method to pen cattle onto a chosen range, it took cows out of the driver's seat and allowed ranchers to control their movement (and stop "free grazing" by traveling herds).

The Tin Star is surrounded by a similar steel accoutrement. Four thousand feet of prickly loveliness that is singular in its willingness to "bite"!

Deer jump the top strand and wind it around the next strand down. Unwind that bow fiddle tight puppy and lose some hide and blood (ask me how I know)?

Tighten sagging stretches of the saber toothed one, let your tool of choice slip...and yep...more personal tissue/sinew/plasma sacrificed to the "god" of the bovine calaboose?

When the Hebrew tribes gave up their nomadic life and settled in Palestine in agricultural communities, the most important matter was the fixing of definite boundary-lines to separate the lands of the different tribes and of the families within the tribes. The importance of this is sufficiently shown in the Book of Joshua, where a careful record is made of the boundaries of the tribes and their families. No mention is made of "bob woir"...just "boundary markers".

However, Ecclesiastes 10:8 tells us that serpents delight to lurk in the crevices of such fences?

Given the ole ranch hand's number of scars, blood loss, and ripped clothes....it would be a tuff sell to convince him that dang demon fence ain't part rattlesnake!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

We used barbed wire on the farm when I was a kid here in Maine; more than once I ripped some article of clothing while trying to crawl under the fence!

glnroz said...

i think a shipment of bobwoir over to that region might work out. Nothing else has..lol (boundaries)..reckon?