In a recent
Nature magazine article, scientists suggest that
threatened African wildlife can be saved by moving the animals to
the American Great Plains.
What a great way to restore
our faith in cowboys! Many have forgotten that cowboys with broken
bones regularly compete in bronc and bull riding, and all have
survived lousy prices and federal officials who think “cattle
guard” is a job description. Some are so rugged they carry a cell
phone in their pants, right next to their reproductive equipment.
These boys ain’t scared of nothing but they need respect, and
the African scheme might be the right gimmick to revitalize cowboy
traditions, especially rodeo.
Team ropers, for example,
would need longer ropes and taller horses for heading and heeling
giraffes. Changes in the bucking lineup might send longhorn bulls
to the Old Leopards’ Home. Instead of riding bareback broncs,
cowboys would take the Zebra Challenge: First, they catch one.
Oryx-Dogging, anyone? Lasso a Leopard?
Some bull riders
wear helmets, but rhinoceros riders might need full body armor for
a rank mount. Competition would be lively for the Wildebeest and
Warthog Wrastles. Teens hooked on hiphop would love Hippo Milking.
Instead of Bull Fighting, fearless clowns could leap in and out of
barrels in an arena full of big cats — right after the
felines put the zing back in Barrel Racing. And for beginning
cowchildren wearing helmets, Dikdik Dogging!
Fresh
wildlife will liven up Great Plains ecotourism: At Mount Rushmore,
photograph the lions on Teddy Roosevelt’s head. Bully!
This African change on the range could demonstrate how
relevant a cowboy’s skills are to this modern world. Who do
you call if the lions eat too many tourists? A cowboy, of course,
whose predecessors roped timber wolves and grizzly bears. Limber up
those lariats and let’s get Western!
Proponents of
a Western veldt mention lions stalking deer in Nebraska cornfields,
but predators follow game, and the kitties might prefer something
slower. Shoppers, say, in a Denver mall. Picture it: Screaming
crowds flee a grumbling lion until … Look – just past that
Victoria’s Secret: a lone cowboy appears between the fake
trees, lariat spinning. Pity about the animal-rights activist who
leapt protectively in front of the lion.
Since a
horse’s hooves might slip on the tile, the mall-patrol cowboy
will take advice from our Middle Eastern friends, choosing a
bullet-proof Mercedes. This might also be the perfect time for
Cowboy Joe to master a new mount.
Of course, new predators would
change how we deal with endangered species. Forget ferrets; the
wild dogs would eat them while the jackals finished off the wolves.
Baboons, chimps, and gorillas might revitalize small towns by
providing the cheap labor we’ve lost to cities. Sustainable
economic development: no wages.
Today, our home on the
range is overrun with pseudo-cowboys starving their horses on
five-acre lots. Toothy predators in Jackson, Dallas and Aspen could
fix that. Wanna be a cowboy? Polish your spurs and patrol your own
ranchette. Can your snowmobile outrun a cheetah?
Leopards
and lions would improve the gene pool of the pampered elk in
national parks and prune the skiers’ family trees. Since
elephants like woody plants, they could thin the woods and reduce
fire danger where tree-huggers have stopped logging. Hyenas would
tidy up, gobbling down the McDonald’s cartons, beer cans and
mattresses tourists discard.
The fall roundup will
separate the real cowboys from the faux and give New Westerners a
chance to Cowboy Up. We might need longer branding irons; sacrifice
redwoods for taller corrals. Better yet, forget bison; let’s
create the African Wildlife Commons. Herds of elephants and
wildebeest thundering across interstates, trampling 18-wheelers,
would bring new meaning to the words “rush hour” and humility to
Hummer drivers. Talk about a win-win situation.
One more
plus: Subdivisions, scourge of the West, would become endangered as
folks decided they’d rather live closer to jobs and food. If
the prairie is “rewilded” by African wildlife, as the scientists
say, only cowboys, those tough, taciturn folks who settled it, will
live here. “Come back, Shane!”
Linda M.
Hasselstrom is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of
High Country News (hcn.org). She ranches in
western South Dakota, which can be pretty darn Western without
elephants, and lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming, home of Frontier Days
rodeo, “the Daddy of Them All.”
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