HAT TIPS
Hello,
Danger! Danger! Thin ice!
Every year, we have a couple of people that go out on the ice a little early to catch the wily whopper. It may be the whale of a walleye, the battling northern pike, or the poor little perch. And their pickup breaks through the ice. Sometimes the fishermen make it out. Sometimes not. I don’t like fish that well.
Personally, I’ve tried ice fishing a couple of times. I am now convinced it was invented by the same people that invented pinochle and peppermint schnapps. I mean my chances of catching a fish dumb enough to swim by a hole with a string hanging down it, the fish would be too dumb to be eaten. It might be contagious and I don’t need any more dumb.
Which brings me to this story.
Yesterday was a beautiful December day. Probably as nice as we’ve seen. It was too nice to stay in and watch football. Too nice to go to a pinochle game. So I grabbed a friend and went for a drive to check on some cows. Cows I normally wouldn’t see for a few days until I took out some salt and mineral.
We came down this hill by a small creek, and lo and behold, there are three cows that had walked out on the ice by this beaver dam and fallen through. I don’t know how deep it was, but it was dang sure swimming deep on a good cow. Two were kind of hanging on the edge and one struggling to barely keep her head above water. But all were alive!
We whooped and hollered one out. She struggled a lot but finally managed to grab a toehold and climb out. The other two we tossed a rope on and dragged them up and out of the cold, icy water.
The black one lay there shivering for a while, struggled to her feet, and after a half hour or so, managed to walk off. The red one was colder than a witch’s …. Darn cold! We gave her some antibiotic; a little aspirin stuff, and covered her with a horse blanket. This morning she was gone! Not dead gone. Gone, like got up and left! Bet she won’t cross the creek again.
Anyway, we stopped when we got back to town to toast each other and brag about what good cowboys we were.
And we met a police detective. No, he wasn’t arresting us. He is a friend. He told us about a call the Dickinson rescue had to answer a couple of days ago.
Some people were out by a creek or the lake and their dog had gone out on the ice. And now you are getting ahead of me, the dog had fallen through the ice. So the people called 911 and asked for the rescue team to come out. They quickly responded, and sent the dive team along. They’ve got those rubber suit deals and can get in icy water better than a cowboy wearing a straw hat and boots.
But, and this is the truth, the people had rescued the dog alone. The dog must have been a lot better than my dog, Vern Baker. Because they took their four-year-old son (I guess they figured he was the lightest one in the family, or else the only one they could boss around), tied a rope around his waist, and had him walk out on the ice and grab the dog by the collar and pull him in!
I mean they might have been high fiving and proud of what they accomplished, but if Grandma caught me doing that to one of our grandchildren, I just as well go ice fishing on thin ice.
All I’m saying is some people are too dumb to have children.
Later,
Dean