So this is how the range wars started?

There’s gonna be another one before long, the way things are going.

You remember two weeks ago I said that cattle operation did something witless with their new well pump, and now they’re pumping water all over the ground?

I tried to be polite at the time. It clearly wasn’t done without knowledge of the consequences, but I called the kid who’s been made responsible for these &^%$ing cattle and told him of the mess he was making as if he didn’t already know. That was over two weeks ago, nothing was done, they’ve driven in a herd since then, and you can imagine the mess.

The mess they make on ground they control isn’t any of my business. But that’s not exactly the Ogallala Aquifer they’re trying to pump dry, and they’re not the only ones who use it. At some point it becomes my business. And I did try to be polite.

So when being polite failed, I did something I never saw me doing – I contacted the property owners’ association to see if they’d be interested. Only to find I’d have to take a number, because those morons have been cutting fences and they’ve got the whole place in an uproar.

And it wasn’t hard to find an example. You can’t really see this because of my crappy phone camera, but there’s no wire between the wooden post and the iron one. There was before, but there isn’t now.

Okay, this whole place is a maze of fences old and new, and quite a few don’t make a lot of sense. This one in particular would drive a cattleman crazy, because there’s wire on three sides of a – well, let’s be generous and call it a meadow – but it’s open to the wash. So cattle can get in from the wash, and do, but they’re terminally stupid and can’t find their way back out. It really could be necessary to help cattle out of this cul-de-sac every damn day, and I can see where they’d get tired of it. Which – boo-hoo – comes under the heading of Things That Are Not My Problem, Because It’s Not Your Fence And Nobody Invited You Here.

And yet, technically, it appears something of a gray area as to whether the law isn’t on the side of the fence-cutters.

And that’s not by any means the worst example. That particular fence isn’t doing anybody any good: I suppose the land is owned by somebody but couldn’t tell you who, they’re not around. But there are plenty of other fences owned by people who live here, and they’re getting cut too. Like some little old handicapped lady I don’t know whose land is fenced but who doesn’t like to get in and out of her truck to close her gate. Cattle got in and couldn’t find their way back out, so snip went the wire cutters. That one, apparently, hit the fan.

Bottom line was that when I contacted a couple of people on the POA board, I found receptive ears. I’m told they’ve already scheduled a come-to-Jesus meeting with our new guests.

But what I suspect the POA is going to hear at that meeting is “Screw you, this is what the law says.” And that’s when things could conceivably turn ugly.