It is still unclear to me quite why I did it, bought Cinco de Mayo. I can tell those of you who cherish large arn that it was an awful lot like looking at a big piece of machinery with fabulous lines and thinking, 'gosh, that's cheap' Next thing and it's in your shop, or, as the case may be, pasture..
I started out thinking 'burro'. A nice little animal that could graze the land and not cause trouble. I was as green to large animal ownership as a virgin is to the bloody sheet. I had no business doing it, but I plunked down the $800 and came home with a green two year old john mule. A male is called a john, or horse, mule, and a lady is called molly. Johns are always gelded. Just because they are sterile doesn't mean they don't want to fool around.
He terrified me at 1300 pounds, and he thrilled me. Cinco taught me a lot about social relations. When I was with him I either had to be the alpha mule, or get my face pushed in. Since I am not by nature a really macho, dominant male, this was never easy for me. He kicked me a couple of times, and I came to realize that the social issues involved were very serious. While he was always well treated and never mean, he could nail your ass to the barn door if you didn't play by mule-rules. It is not an easy or simple school in which to study. I was relieved to see him go, and I miss him.
In my own bumbling way I actually did get him trained to the saddle and we rode the canyons together, equally inexpert in what we were doing, but having fun. Cinco was in the family for over 3 years, and when I sold him, for the same $800 - a bargain to the new owner, he went to work on a pack train, an elk-hunting mule. The people who bought him are very good with their animals and I was very relieved they wanted him.
Pat was not to be denied. She wanted her own mule. Hey, what 60 year old woman doesn't want a mule? Goose came to us from the same people who later bought Cinco. He was smaller than Cinco by about 300 pounds, but very savvy. Cinco had the upper hand at first, but slowly began to give way, until Goose was the alpha; even then Cinco challenged him constantly. Goose was 20 when we got him, and had been 10 years in front of a plow and 10 on the pack train. Since mules frequently live into their 40's he wasn't near used up. We paid $1500 for him, and when it was time to get mule-free we gave him away to a family that had a lonely horse that was crippled. A golden parachute for Goose. Equines get very depressed if they have no social context to relate to; even a chicken will do, no kiddding, so he needed to go someplace where he would have company. (Actually, a goose works out really well as it is as socially dependent as an equine, but it has to be a single goose and a single equine. If not, they take up with their own kind. The depression only deepens for the one left out.)
