Zee and I just got back from a trip to what we call the north part of the ranch “Bagby Corner”. My job this Sunday morning was to install a plug in the side of a 200 gallon tub that had been laying out in the weeds of my salvage yard for a few years. It was just waiting to be reborn so it would show everybody that it could still stay “full to the brim”. It’s job is to provide a little bit of water to the local wildlife population. The spring that services this trough runs year round but only provides a “pint” of water per minute but when you do the math you find that this little oasis multiplied by 1440 minutes in a day yields 180 gallons per day of water. Why that’s enough H2O to give a few Black Tail deer a drink and with its escape ramp in place, birds, ground squirrels and all the lizards, bees, flies, snakes and anybody else that needs a drink can get one, without drowning.

But this is not really what I want to talk about. What I have discovered in the last couple of weeks traveling around checking and fixing water troughs on the ranch is that the coronavirus has even made its presence known here at the V6. How so, you say? Well I have noticed this past month or so, is the way my cattle are quite evenly spread over the entire ranch in bunches of 10 or less. In past years I believe I could find some groups of at least 20 hanging out together but not this year. So by simple deduction I believe that some of my cattle that are of the millennial generation must have cellphones and with the world’s constant blitz of 24 hour news, one or more of my cattle must have caught the program on NBC that stated that many more Democrats support social distancing and shelter in place than Republicans. So it stands to reason that is why I find no herd of 10 or more banded together this year. To further prove my point, I find all my 40 or so horses, still traveling hither and yon together and always within talking distance of each other. I can only draw one conclusion they have to be Republicans for their actions say to me “screw this social distancing” let’s keep on “prancing and dancing”.

So when the history books are written only then will we know for sure, whether we should have kept the most vulnerable at home while the rest of us went to work or where most stayed at home and produce a mini baby boom starting next Christmas, which will help by creating more people to buy more stuff.

I’ve let the horses and cattle express their view on this whole mess we're in. Now I want to tell you where I come from. Somewhere between bombastic and the truth stretching way the news is presented 24/7 and the total denial that there is a pandemic. l think reason and common sense will join forces in the middle.  Its almost inconceivable that some invisible particles of life (a virus) can shut down our world as we know it, but it has. So when will we start to say good riddance to this quagmire? Well one sure sign will be when our government starts printing more money. But the real day to day solutions that will get us back to a newer and better normal will come from you and I unfettered to sort the “wheat from the chaff”, then we’ll have answers that will work for everybody. From the top down won’t work. But the one thing our government can do right now is to keep printing those dollars we need now and we’ll worry about the inflation later. So for me and all my Democratic cattle and Republican horses let’s agree to disagree with a little good will and decency mixed in.

See ya,

Jack