‘Three-fingered’ Bob lay dying on the saloon floor in the mud and the blood and the beer. He was an old man for his time–34 years old to be exact. Quite old for a varmint and bank robber like him up here on the mesa.
They called him ‘Three-fingered’ Bob because, of course, his name was Bob. He liked that. He was playing cards one night and lost a bet. He lost his finger to a dull knife for a marker on his debt. Six days later he paid his debt and his finger was returned to him, but it was too late to reattach. Bob didn’t learn his lesson.
The next week he lost a finger on the other hand–another bet he couldn’t cover. He paid his gambling debt sooner this time, after only one day–but it was too late to sew the finger back on.
Within days it happened once more. Bob was now down to two fingers remaining on one hand and three on the other. Three fingers, on the one hand, wasn’t why they called him ‘Three-fingered’ Bob. He was called ‘Three-fingered’ Bob because he kept his three dried-up fingers in a little bag tied to his belt.
I never did find out what happened to ‘Three-fingered’ Bob, why he was dying, and why the mud and the blood and the beer were all over the floor. Because by the time I finished telling you his story he died and the coroner came and took his corpse away.
“What did kill ‘Three-fingered Bob?” you may ask. This, no one knows that I know of. In fact, we may never know as this is, . . . A Mystery of the Mojave ~
Rats will eat whatever rats eat because that is what rats were designed to do. Rats, regardless of what they eat all like and unanimously agree that they prefer cheese over any other rat food.
There was a hungry rat on a ranch peeking through a crack in the wall watching the rancher and his wife open a package. The ranch rat was hoping it was cheese in the package. “If not cheese,” he wondered, “what food might it contain?” He was aghast and horrified to discover that it was a rat trap. This confounded contraption could be the device of his demise.
Panicking the rat ran to the barnyard the rat hysterically shouting the warning;
“There’s a rat trap in the ranch house, a rat trap in the ranch house!”But no one seemed to care.
He ran to the chicken coop. The chicken, the largest one, clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, “Pfffttt . . . Excuse me, Mr. Rat, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it. I do not care. Please, step away.”
The rat then ran to the pigpen. Addressing the fat pig he said, “There’s a rat trap in the ranch house, a rat trap in the house!” “Boo-hoo-hoo-hoo Mr. Rat,” scolded the hog, “Toughen up. We all die someday. Be assured that you are in my thoughts and prayers.”
The rat turned to the cow and repeated his warning. She said, “Like wow, Mr. Rat, a rat trap. Excuse me, but isn’t that just your little problem? Please go away, your whining offends me.”
So the rat thought, “stupid cow, stupid, stupid cow,” and returned to the house, head down and dejected to face the rancher’s rat trap alone. That very night a sound was heard throughout the house, very much like the sound of a rat trap trapping its prey. The rancher’s wife ran into the room to see what the trap caught. In the darkness, she didn’t see that it was a rattlesnake that had been caught. The snake was very angry. Very, very angry. The snake’s rattle was caught in the trap. The snake bit the farmer’s wife.
The rancher tried to suck the venom out of the bite. It didn’t work–She got worse. The rancher rushed his wife to the hospital. They couldn’t do anything for her. It had been too long since she was struck. She returned home with a fever.
Back then in the old days, everyone treated a fever with fresh chicken soup, and to do that you had to have a fresh chicken so the rancher took his hatchet to the chicken coop for the chicken soup’s main ingredient. It pretty much would have been a bloody frenzy but the rancher just took out the largest one and the survivors all moved up a notch in the pecking order. Dumb cluck.
The rancher’s wife’s condition continued to worsen. She was delirious and spoke in tongues. Her arms and legs were lashed to the bedposts. Friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. The rancher had to feed them.
The rancher went out and butchered the arrogant pig that told the rat, “boo-hoo-hoo-hoo.” The hog made a delicious pork chop dinner for all and tasty bacon for a breakfast with the last couple of eggs laid by the chicken.
The rancher’s wife did not get well. She was in great pain. The pain was excruciating. She had hallucinations. She died hard. Slowly.
Many people came to her funeral. There was wailing and moaning and crying and pulling hair and throwing dirt. Folks were hungry after all that mourning and stuff. So the rancher ordered the emotionally distant cow to be slaughtered and cooked for dinner and a barbecue the next day.
The meat was tender and well-streaked and marbled with fat in all the right places. Everyone was going on and on. “Melt in your mouth,” some had said.
The Moral is:
The next time you hear that someone is facing a problem and think that it does not concern you, remember that when there is a rat trap in the ranch house, the entire ranch is at risk.
Just Kidding:
This story has no moral. There are no winners here. No one is going to change. This has been pointless.
The rat lived through it all but died of food poisoning from a bad casserole left behind when the widowed rancher left the ranch with his new girlfriend . . .
The verbena had issues and descended from the top in waves overwhelming the primrose lying in a poorly planned ambush. The white flowers were shocked and their little mouths made an ‘o’ shape as they petrified themselves in anticipation of the inevitable.
This is a photo of Mike bolting out of the brush after some rustling around in there and getting part of his ear bitten off and eaten or something. Mike was last seen near Salt Springs hopping across the desert in the epitome of fear and the adrenaline rush of flight.
Mike, was the family’s favorite lagomorph. They would see him during their desert travels all over the place hopping out of a bush or across their path when they least expected.
After a fruitless 3 minute search for Mike, the family left to check-in at their hotel.
“Coming out of the parking area there was a clunk noise like we hit something,” one of the children stated.
“Mom started to say something, but dad said for her to shut up,” the kid continued.
As I’m as tired as the weary wren I watch him watch the sunset then of a subtle nature the sweeping shadow grows tall against the distant mountains & the evening will fall silently we gaze across the gray salt plain silently we wish of a subtle nature to remain
The season of the long shadows is over. Shadows clinging to the trunks of awkward trees, cactus, brush, and the base of rocks, stretched in desperation fearing their silent annihilation in the encroaching dark.
The new season brings foreshortened versions of silhouettes from the south. They emerge from the base of the mountains and then rapidly down the bajadas and canyons and arroyos, as it were. The day is quickly painted over in unsunlight and deep twilight while a cold nether rolls across the bristly plain.
The little rat people may look out of their little rat homes before retreating into their little rat holes to do whatever it is that little rat people do there.
The cutest little adorable cottontail bunny hippity-hops cautiously down the little bunny trail to have a little bunny snack. Or to die. Little bunnies generally do not usually live any longer than the moment they learn what a coyote is.
Alas! At the smother of darkness, the coyote has completed his transformation from a lazy begging dog to a starving psychotic murderer.
I suppose everyone has heard the story I am about to tell you and if you aren’t part of everyone then you will be after you read this because you will have heard the story I am going to tell.
One fine and sunny summer morning in the late 1950s/early 60s, there was a road crew patching the asphalt on a lonely stretch of desert highway. I am not sure of which highway and I pretty much don’t care because this could have happened just about anywhere in the Mojave. Anyway, these guys are out there working away and down this empty highway rode this big, old, dark blue Buick driven by a somewhat elderly lady with another lady riding as a passenger. They slowed and stopped when they got to the road crew.
“Excuse me, sir?” the driver asked.
“Yes? How can I help you?” the signalman replied.
“My name is Betty and this is my friend, Betty–You can call her, ‘other’ Betty. We are school teachers from Indiana on vacation. We noticed these mines all along the mountains and were thinking how nice it would be to have a gold nugget to show our students. Would you tell us where we could get one?”
The road crew; the signalman, the man with the shovel, the man supervising the man with the shovel, and the supervisor of the man supervising the man with the shovel had all gathered next to the car. They were all smiling–It just wasn’t that easy.
Garlock – 1896 — Gold Gamble
“Well, did you see those piles of gravel next to the mines?” the supervisor asked. “Well, those are tailings,” he continued.
“Yeah,” you can find gold in there,” the shovel operator said with a chuckle.
“Thank you!” said Betty.
“Yes. Thank you,” chimed in ‘other’ Betty.
With that, Betty turned the car around and they disappeared in the heat waves in the distance.
The road crew had a good laugh.
It was only about 15 minutes later the Buick come tooling back down the road. It slowed and then stopped at the road crew.
“We found a piece! Thank you kindly!” Betty hollered.
‘Other’ Betty held out her hand and a half-inch thick chunk of gold covered the palm of her hand. Now, ‘Other’ Betty was a large woman with the hands of a truck driver and the nugget she held was damn big. The road crew was aghast at their stupid joke gone awry and they passed the rest of the day in embarrassed silence. The merry school teachers pleased that they had an authentic piece of gold to show their students, drove on to Bakersfield because Bakersfield seems to be where everyone that finds gold goes.
