Address It “Attention Woody”: The Mule Who Killed the Red Tip
PublishedMay 8, 2004
I, Bernie Harberts, did not use generative AI to write or illustrate this article. Spell check and grammar check, yes. AI, no.
The struggle to keep our hosts’ shrubbery upright continues.
Springtime is the hardest season for Woody to contain his urge to crush. New hair follicles are pushing out old. His coat is ragged with great patches of experience.
Winter snows have taken their toll on Woody’s coat. I took this photo on a training ride in Southern Pines, NC, the winter before we took off on our trip.
The hindquarters are checker-boarded with bite marks from old paddock mates. His inner thigh is fuzzy with new growth on old scrapes. His pasterns are hairing back over where that rope got him in Dawson’s Creek.
But if you look closely, there are fine new hairs pushing through the winter beaten old fur.
It’s the eternal conflict between old and new. It makes him itch like Hell.
But he’s casual in his scratch.
At the Cochrans’, he ambled up to a prickly Jack Oak with intent in his eye. It was a scrubby Jack mind you. A wild one.
His eyes went all dewy and with languid steps he pushed the oak over with his chest and continued walking until the scrub was square between his hind legs. Then with a balmy “aaaaaahhhhhhh” look in his eyes he began rubbing back and forth on the prickly branches.
“Woody! No!” I shouted, trying to nip an expensive precedent in the bud. Ok, it was just a Jack Oak. But what was next? Bradford pears?
He scuttled off his twiggy scrape. As soon as I turned my back, he was straddling it again, easing back and forth with rather pornographic intent. Itching a scratch can be mildly, or madly stimulating.
For the next three weeks Woody contented himself with inanimate scrapes. Fence posts in Nine Mile, boards and gates in Kellum. Once there was the screech of a nail pulling out of sheet metal. I looked over and he was rubbing his shoulder on the corner of a mobile home. Foster Harold didn’t care so I let it slide.
Then came Parkton.
Skip had overcome his Special Forces suspicion and agreed to let us camp on the far side of his yard. Between the Long Leaf pines and the soldierly row of Red Tips.
That evening, he and his wife invited me over for a wonderful dinner of beef soup, greens and root beer. We talked about substance abuse prevention, camping, food caches and I generally tried to make a good impression.
Before going to bed, I checked Woody’s rope to make sure he wouldn’t put a hoof through my tent. Good, seventy five feet of anchor rope out.
In the morning, I stuck my head out of the tent to find a red mule easing his undercarriage back and forth across a magnificent Red Tip.
“Thunk, thunk” I heard roots popping underground followed by the slam of a metal door. Damn! Skip was coming.
I dove from the tent, put on my best “Man, can you believe he just did that” face and ran for the prone red bush. Woody’s upper lip curled skyward with his gaze, the equine equivalent of the morning stretch. Bliss.
“Morning Mike,” I shot toward a sour looking Skip and in the same cheery tone booted Woody off the collapsed Red Tip. “Morning, Bernie,” he recovered and the coffee in his hands seemed to warm his expression. “I brought you some coffee and some fruit.” He handed me an apple and a banana. And later a shovel.
The damage to the Red Tip was minor though my pride took a beating.
Skip, send us a bill if the Red Tip doesn’t make it.
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