You know what’s Crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
New Millennium Cattle rustling.
It’s a crime as old as time, as bold as a Clint Eastwood sneer.
Cattle Rustling is making a come back because cows are worth their weight in gold.
In the old days, beef cows were McDonald’s. Today, it’s Ruth Chris.
Why?
Because of global events like drought in the midwest. That drove up the price of grain, which makes feeding cattle more expensive. Gasoline issues affect transport to market. Add it all up and the price per pound for a steer is higher than the audience at a Cheech and Chong festival.
Think about that.
The price for a cow is higher today than it has ever been in the history of the world.
How long have people owned cows?
Since the beginning of time?
And since the beginning of time, cows have had value.
You could trade a cow for a wife.
You could sell a cow for money.
More cows meant more affluence.
In India? More cows would seem to mean, well, more cows.
Now people are brazenly entering fields and ranches and cattle houses and loading up other people’s cows and driving away.
Sadly one cow looks like the next and many cattle barns don’t bother to check so it’s an easy crime to perpetrate.
The going rate is around $2.50 per pound. With young cows weighing 800 pounds, if someone steals 25 of your cows?
That’s like losing $50,000.
Some people don’t make $50,000 dollars a year.
Imagine someone stealing your entire salary for the year in one crime wave?
I spoke with a cattleman today. Someone stole 50 thousand dollars worth of cows from him.
He’s Clint Eastwood angry.
He came to his farm one day and he counted his prized steers.
1.2.3.4.5…25.
He was 25 short.
Someone, somehow entered his land and drove off with 25 cows. 50-thousand dollars worth of livestock gone.
It could have been a jewel thief rummaging through a jewelry box, or a gunman robbing a bank clerk.
Instead it was a cattle caper.
50K STOLEN.
Stealing is easy for some people.
Many people make a career out of stealing.
People steal big screen tv’s or cigarettes or cars.
Stealing a car takes some skill. Stealing a Snicker’s Bar from the grocery store just takes guile and purpose.
Stealing a cow takes a lot of knowledge.
I wouldn’t want to even get in the pen. I’d be afraid of getting kicked.
I don’t want to step in cow crap.
So whoever did this, knows how to lure a cow into a trailer and then drive a trailer full of cows. They have to know what to look for and where to sell them.
Cows are a small universe of experts, if you think about it.
That narrows your scope of bad guys.
I met the victim rancher on his farm.
He wore a wide cowboy hat. He wore boot cut blue jeans. He was clean-shaven with steely blue eyes. His cowboy boots were forged in the Old West with spurs on the heel.
This cowpoke drove a big duely truck and had a moral compass set to justice, truth the American Way.
He was serious about cattle ranching. He was serious about solving his crime.
He offered a cash reward for information leading to an arrest.
He turned to the camera and spoke from the heart.
“Turn yourself in. Repent. Step forward. And I’ll forgive you.”
Repent?
This word catches me off guard.
Turns out he was a cowboy and a preacher.
His words were serious.
“I can’t afford to take a hit like this,” he said.
His words were deliberate and direct. I sensed the year 1884 oozing out of this man. It’s as if he wanted to throw a rope over a tree and hang someone.
“If you make us come after you, we will find you, we have leads, and there will be no mercy,” he says his controlled anger on full display.
The field around me is vast and timeless. The trees on the hills are turning yellow and the deep reds of passion and fury.
As I gaze forward, into an October sky full of blue, I think that it could be 100 years ago. It could be 200 years ago. The hills, the wind, the field, all so timeless.
This crime, as old as time.
The Cowboy is a man of that era.
“Are you from 1887?” I ask him trying to break a smile on his Stonehenge serious face.
“This is a serious hit,” he says. “I can’t afford this.”
He is a character from a Western Movie. I imagine him in black and white and the cows being stolen in a great cattle round up on a prairie that doesn’t exist in Middle Tennessee.
I want to romanticize his story, but he reminds me that theft is theft. Stealing is stealing. Everything has value.
He is a hard-working American. He had something, and someone else took it.
Now he wants justice.
It’s 2014 and justice doesn’t come at the end of a rope.
But in his mind, on this timeless stretch of field, A rope might just be the answer.
I can’t imagine losing 20 dollars.
50 thousand?
My God.
So to the new millennium cattle rustlers.
Better pray the cops find you first.
This cowboy / preacher / businessman would just as soon hang you from the highest tree for all to see.
He’d do it with a glint in his eye and a sense of purpose.
Prairie Justice is swift and final.
If Cattle Rustling is back in vogue.
Maybe public hangings can’t be far behind.
We can only hope.
life’s Crazy™