No Broken Neck. No Broken Back. Just One Upside Down Mule.
PublishedMarch 21, 2004
I, Bernie Harberts, did not use generative AI to write or illustrate this article. Spell check and grammar check, yes. AI, no.
Woody met Mike Hollister on the side of the road while filling his tank. The clover was green, traffic on 101 sparse, so I’d slipped off the bridle so Woody could have a feed while I pondered how we’d cross the bridge ahead.
“bernie, this is not a mule trailer. is this a good idea?”
“What are you doing about the Core Creek Bridge?” Mike asked me a few minutes after he’d pulled up for a gam. I stuttered the usual “Oh, he’s good in traffic” bit and before I could get to the more convincing arguments, Mike had offered us a ride across the offending structure.
Now those of you that live in Carteret County know the top of that bridge is one of the highest parts in those flat, sandy parts. It has to be. It crosses the Intracoastal Waterway and has to be 65 feet above the water so the sailboat masts will clear.
If you’ve driven across the Core Creek Bridge, you also know it’s no place to meet a mule and his man. It’s narrow and so peaked at the top you don’t know what’s in your lane until you’re on top of it. Poor mule.
So Mike offered the use of his trailer and for that I’ll be forever grateful.
Woody, though, has different thoughts on the topic.
When I opened the trailer on the other side of the bridge, it was empty. “Oh my God!” Mike shouted and worse yet came from my lips. There was a pile of groaning fur in the far corner of the stall. It looked like someone had tossed a fox coat over the back of a chair without taking the poor beast out.
Too bad it was a mule. Mule Woody. He’d leapt over the chest bar and got his hindquarter caught in the attempt. Now his head was crushed to the ground, his head held skyward by the tie rope at a neck-breaking angle. And his back legs were completely airborne. At a back-snapping, leg-shattering tilt.
I whipped out my knife and severed the rope that held his neck at such a cruel angle to the trailer roof. “Clunk” went Woody’s skull as it hit the floorboards. Then came the struggle and Woody flipped himself upside down. I clambered over him to escape the churning hooves.
Woody scrambled to his feet, looked at me with his deep sea eyes and angled his ears toward me for a scratch. “God Woody!” I wanted to shout but hugged him instead so Mike wouldn’t see my damp eyes. We really had snatched this one from the far side.
Mike and I drove him back to Mike’s farm. There we dis-assembled the inside of his trailer so I could extricate my charge. No broken neck. No broken back. No broken leg. Just a hand-sized scrape on the inside of his off-hind leg where the hair was rubbed away.
“bernie – next time you take the trailer”
Out in his paddock, Woody just dragged us around the winter Bermuda stubble when we tried to medicate the hairless skin.
I had a good snuff of Tennessee brown that night. Then I walked into the night to hug my free mule. Woody of course wasn’t having any of it. His sense of self preservation is higher than ever.
After a day’s rest in Mike’s paddock Woody successfully traversed the Core Creek Bridge.
Mike’s trailer goes on record as the only one ever to ship an Amish mule over the Core Creek Bridge. Upside down.
(Thanks Mike and Tina for being such good friends to man and mule alike. Hector and Bingo, Woody misses you.)
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