Mikey Will Eat ANYTHING!

I was scrounging in the cabinets yesterday for something I could whip up for Jonathan.  His applesauce biscuits have crumbled into nothingness in the freezer baggies.   Unlike Mikey, he has a very discerning pallet and will not eat just ANYTHING.  

That's when I found the CAN.  The leftover can of the worst tuna on the planet that I purchased for a mere $.99 as a skunk lure.  Skunks are the garbage men of the night.  They will eat anything and everything you put out there, just like Mikey.  Stinky tuna was their downfall.

There's no way I would EVER eat that nasty stuff, but I figured the kitties or even the fox might partake.  I was wrong.  Yes this video shows the cute little kitty kitty lapping up the juice, but he didn't eat one single bite of the tuna.  It all got thrown away.  Maybe the possums will think it's five-star gourmet!

I was busy all day yesterday, so no exciting quilt pictures are available.  Instead, this is our cow camp.  Every year we had a lease to run cattle in the southern part of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  At the time, there were no roads in this part of the country, so cattle were driven up on horseback.

That meant packing all your food and supplies in on the mules.  Mules can be a cantankerous bunch of critters.  There's a reason everyone thinks they are stubborn, because they ARE.  The only fresh thing we hauled in was eggs, which usually ended up smashed to pieces when the mule went crazy, bucking off down the hill.  They were really good at getting those packs off.  Luckily (or maybe NOT so luckily), the dry chipped beef survived every trip, as did the potatoes.  SO ... potatoes and chipped beef for every meal.

That tall dark pipe is the stovepipe to the rock fireplace where we cooked.  Yes there was a small wood stove inside, but we never used it.  There were also two small beds attached to the walls, with mattress "springs" made of twisted rope.  Too bad we never slept on them.

It's a very small cabin, so there wasn't enough room for sleeping.  We set up a large tarp outside, on which we deposited our sleeping bags, flipping the tarp over the top to stay dry.  I can tell you it was always cold.  I slept with ALL my clothes on ... mostly because in the mornings we would find bear tracks around the tarp.  That's probably why for 30 years I dreamed of being chased by bears every night.

Was there a bathroom you ask?  Of course!  It was an outhouse about 20 feet BEHIND the cabin.  About 30 feet beyond that was a huge rock formation, almost as big as the cabin.  That's where the rattlesnake den was.  We found them in the outhouse often.  That's probably why I had nightmares of rattlesnakes chasing me for 30 years.  To the far right is the big fenced meadow where we let the horses and mules run.  

This picture was a few years later after the advent of color film.  That's my little dog Maggie.  By this time there was a logging road not very suitable for cattle trucks, but we made it in with no broken eggs.

On the far left hanging on the wall is the cast iron frying pan we cooked with.  On this occasion we killed two rattlesnakes that we fried up for dinner.  Yup ... tastes like chicken, although quite bony.  

This time, one of the Indian packers came with us.   He had left some meat here a few months before and decided he should cook it up in the small inside wood stove oven.  His name wasn't Mikey, but he would eat ANYTHING.  Yessirree ... about 30 feet in front of my boots is a deep steel-lined pit where we kept our meat (to keep it away from the bears).  

We all told him the beef he left in there several months ago would NOT be any good.  He said it was fine, dug it up and stuck it in the oven.  You cannot imagine the smell!!  Our only table is inside the cabin, but no one sat at it for the next week.  We finally convinced him to throw it out.  

The meat we took with us that wasn't going to be cooked, was sliced thin and spread out on the lovely dirt covered barbwire fence to dry.  There's nothing better than fresh jerky.  At least that's what the meat bees thought when they completely covered it, leaving nothing on the fence but a few strings of gristle.  

This is the year us kids took off on our horses to the ranger station a few miles away.  We were playing the Stadium Horse Jumping game when my brother fell off and broke his arm on the only pinecone within 300 feet.  There was no coddling back in the day ... you had to be tough.  They pulled on it to straighten it out, tied a stick to each side, then wrapped it up in old flour sack tea towels.  

The only way out was by Ranger Station helicopter or horseback, neither of which were going to happen because cattle needed to be checked on.  Weeks later, the Doc said he would live.  I was just glad it wasn't ME!!  

So that's it for today.  I spent most of the day trying to read the printouts from the new Elks accounting system which doesn't have ANY account numbers in order.  Who in the world dreamed up THIS program!!  

It's breakfast time here, but I can guarantee you I won't be eating any Copycat Panda food OR any chipped beef.  Maybe a broken egg or two!