I once worked on several Western wear accounts, Justin Boots and Panhandle Slim PRCA Rodeo apparel among them. We'd shoot for weeks on Texas ranches with real, working cowboys or in rodeo arenas with rodeo cowboys. They are a tough bunch. I found out I wasn't.
One morning before the sun came up, we were on a huge ranch north of Fort Worth, shooting cowboys rounding up longhorns. Just as we got set up and ready to shoot, the entire herd got upset stomachs - a polite term for what actually happened. Hundreds of bovinae suddenly unloaded everywhere - on cue, as if their colons were on a synchronized timer. The aroma hung in the air for miles.
While the real cowboys were working on this stinky setback, I stood over by the fence, watching and wondering how they would wash all those longhorns. What I didn't see was the meanest horse on the ranch sneaking up behind me. He was taller than the other horses and had a Jack Nicholson air about him. About the time I felt his breath on the back of my neck, he peeled his floppy horse-lips back, protruded a giant set of pearly whites, and chomped down on me.
If you have never been hoisted into the air by the skin of your back, you can't clearly comprehend the pain involved. As that Goliath of a horse swung me around, two old ranch hands saw the action and moseyed over. One of them - the one with a sardonic drawl and a penchant for stating the obvious - looked up at me as I flailed about in the pungent air and said, "Looks like he's got ya there."
Yeah. I could feel a kidney and part of my liver going down Mean Mr. Ed's throat before my new best friend Hoss decided that the best course of action was to cold-cock the animal. Hoss hit the horse on the nose with a roundhouse left hook which, of course, caused the horse to clench his teeth even harder.
Now, instead of operating out of playful mischief, the horse was snorting and angry. He stomped and slung me around like a cheap pet store toy, then shot me through the air about ten feet. When I hit the ground, I did the only thing I could think of: I jumped over the fence . . .
And landed in the freshly extruded ocean of longhorn dung. Strange as it sounds, at that particular moment, it was the better of the two options.
I was no worse for the biting and finished the shoot with a bruise between my shoulder blades the size of Steven Tyler's mouth. At sunset the old cowboys all gathered around me. "You're one of us now," Hoss said.
"Welcome to the Got Bit by the Meanest Horse in Texas Club."
-- T-Bone
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