Another Earl Story

My family tends to run hot and cold on Thanksgiving, probably because of all the various family factions due to divorce, my brother and I being grown and married into new families, etc.

Several years ago, prior to my involvement with Wow I was an avid deer hunter and its something the whole family (Earl's part, at least) is generally involved in. We own a pretty good sized construction company and have leased a ranch near Sana Antonio for about 15 years for the family and some management type employees to hunt.

I found myself alone out there on the night before Thanksgiving as others had dinners to prep and it was unseasonably cold an wet (like real autumn weather)I had a few drinks and sat around the campfire pondering the meaning of life when my cell phone rang. Now it is important to note that Earl is a cattle rancher in his spare time. When this all went down, I was living on the smal ranch just south of town that has my grandmother's farm house, Earl's cattle and our corporate office. Bizzare, I know but having a construction yard out in the sticks is a good place for it.

Apparently, Earl's cattle got loose and onto to road. In the cold, dark night, a Honda Civic plowed into one. So, the phone call was to get home and handle it. /sigh. It took me about 40 min to get home and there was a tow truck dragging the dead cow off the road and up into our property, a Honda Civic tha was now a convertible and very bemused driver trying to keep warm while giving his report to the sherriff. Earl arrived on the scene a few moments later.

The tow truck took the Honda away, the sherriff gave Earl a ticket (WTF kinda ticket, lol) and a family member came and retrieved the driver of the car. So, I'm standing there in the cold looking at this cow and wondering what the hell to do with it. Being that we are right next to the construction yard, I figure I'll go get a back hoe, dig a hole, and bury it. And that's where the fun begins.......

"That's 100% Brangus beef, boy, you ain't gonna just bury it...its still fresh"

/facepalm


"Okay dad....what do you want me to do?"
"Gut it"

Oh God. Now, when you hunt deer, you have to field dress them. Remove thier internal organs and prepare them for butchering into steaks and meat to be ground for sausage etc. A white tailed deer weighs 100-200 lbs varying regionally. This cow weighed a good 1500-2000 lbs. So, I set to work with my little hunting knife. You'd think Earl would help but you don't know Earl....he actually walked up to the house, picked up a lawn chair, walked back and plopped down to supervise.

Up to my shoulders in blood and guts hearing :

"God damn you, you're ruining the meat! Cut it there!"

Did not make me happy. Eh, I suppose it took about an hour, it was cold, I was covered in blood, and pissed off. Sure, people do this all the time, beef doesn't show up on your big mac or in the grocery store by magic but they have "facilities" and "equipment" not a hunting knife and Earl for a supervisor. I should add, said cow was preggers and yanking out the calf was the hard part.

EDIT: Oh man, I can't believe I forgot about my recently seperated step sister "helping" me and flirting with me the whole time I have my head inside a dead cow.....uggg

Finally I got it done, so now what. Well, my step brother Warren(who is worthy of a few stories of his own) showed up with a chain saw to quarter it.


"F this, I'm outta here"

Epilogue: So, I woke up the next morning, Pen got the kids dressed and ready and we got in the car to head to my brother's house for Thanksgiving dinner. If I didn't know anybetter, I would think it was a sick joke but parked in the middle of the driveway was a backhoe with the bucket extended as high as possible. Hanging from a chain by the neck was the cow (apparently the chainsaw idea got canned) It was creepy, grotesque and scared the hell out of my children. Ugg...Anyhow, that made for an interesting Thanksgiving.