My great-grandma, Ada Miller, ran the ID ranch while her husband, I.C., was busy being sheriff of Carbon County and mayor of Rawlins. In the only photo I’ve seen of her, she looks touch as boot leather and definitely no-nonsense.
I.C. had hired a foreman named Charlie Wagers to help Ada on the place, by reputation one of the best and most reliable working cowboys ever to fork a horse. His name appears in some of the old ledgers of the ranch and Charlie was damn well-paid.
One day Ada caught him beating a horse and immediately fired him. To give him a dose of his own medicine, she refused him the use of a horse to get to town and made him walk the forty miles back to Rawlins through the densest concentration of rattlesnakes on the continent.
I relate that story to illustrate that one of the cornerstones of living in Wyoming is not to mistreat animals regardless of the reason.
I think I inherited Ada’s ethos toward critters because my hackles raised when I read of an asshole in Daniel who ran down a wolf with a snowmobile, taped its mouth shut, took it to a bar to show it off then killed it.
He even had the hubris to take a selfie with the muzzled wolf in his house. The asshole’s name is Cody Roberts, and he posed with his prize while grinning and holding a beer like some sort of redneck mighty hunter.
Roberts can thank his lucky stars that he never met Ada Miller or she probably would have horsewhipped him and made him walk barefoot through rattlesnakes.
As it is, he was merely fined $250 for possessing a live wolf. It seems Wyoming’s laws are a tad lax when it comes to torturing animals.
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against killing critters. I’ve dispatched my share of predators, rodents, game animals and livestock. Hell, I’ve even shot horses. But I’ve always had a good reason when I’ve killed something and never done it for fun. Trust me, there is nothing “fun” about killing a horse.
And I’ve never tormented or tortured any of God’s creatures. That sort of despicable behavior just rubs me the wrong way and violates lessons I’ve learned about what it means to live in Wyoming.
Any cowboy, hunter or serious outdoorsman with a modicum of ethics and respect for creation should be just as pissed off. Roberts’ malicious stupidity will give political ammunition to those outside our borders who are convinced that they can manage the Cowboy State better than we can.
I think that, in Roberts’ case, there is a disconnect between the laws we have on our books and the ethics we have in our hearts. And maybe its not possible for our code of laws to adequately express our code of ethics.
That should in no manner diminish the impetus to live an ethical life with respect to our neighbors and our surroundings, particularly in a place as unique and sparsely peopled as Wyoming. Morality shouldn’t always need to be written down to be lived.
Roberts would do himself and his state a great service if he humbled himself and publicly apologized to fellow Wyomingites for his very public display of a lack of ethics. That would mean a helluva lot more than the two-hundred and fifty bucks from his wallet.
And maybe this situation warrants us adding another article to our official Wyoming Code of Conduct, alternatively called the Code of the West. Since some folks need to be reminded from time to time, we can amend our Code to include one final item. It could read something like:
#11 – Don’t be an asshole.
Rod Miller can be reached at: rodsmillerwyo@yahoo.com
