I love my job. Most people tolerate theirs, and I was even raised in a family where your job had absolutely nothing to do with enjoying life. If it paid the bills, you kept it. Period. Thankfully, I get to love it and keep it. Today I spent the day with small groups of faculty and my staff just going over changes and talking about what it is we are hoping to accomplish in the future. It was such a pleasant day, and I could not believe how nice it was to have a little time with each of them. Then I thought about the stallion.
My college is in the southwest high plains, so we are in the heart of real cowboy country. We have this fantastic little walking park with life-size fiberglass animals indigenous to the area. Among them is a buffalo, a colt, a longhorn cow, and a stallion raring back on his hind legs. We are very proud of the park, and people driving by will slow down to show their kids the animals.
So one morning last spring, I drive up to campus, and there is a group of faculty and staff standing at the door, and I can tell something is really wrong. A few years ago, we lost a faculty member in a snow storm, and we have been skittish ever since.
I park, and they come charging down the sidewalk to tell me what is wrong. One of them, the anthropology teacher who has initiated the creation of the park and the purchase of these animals, is in tears. "Did you see the stallion?" they cry.
No, I had not seen it. We walk back down, and they point out this animal lying on the ground, back legs broken, front legs akimbo. He is obviously very dead.
"They are coming to pick him up," she says. I don't know exactly who "they" are, but I'm pretty sure animal control won't come pick up a fiberglass horse, no matter how dead he is. The maintenance crew drives up with their pickup. This horse, remember, is life sized, so they are going to have a hard time fitting him in the back of the truck. She says, "I hope they don't drag his body. I can't watch this."
I tear up and then remember to ask what happened to the horse. "Well," they tell me, "some cowboys got drunk last night and decided they could rope him and tame him." The boys, it seems, are caught, confessed, and writing 2500.00 checks as we speak.
Maintenance is trying to figure out how to load the carcass. Pretty soon, another truck arrives, and two of the maintenance men jump out with an enormous blanket. "Oh," I say, "they're going to make a stretcher."
The anthropologist bows her head. "I can't watch." It takes only a few minutes, but soon the horse is loaded into the pickup, and the two maintenance men ride in the back with him to make sure he doesn't fall out.
An English teacher pulls up and asks what we are doing. "The horse," we choke out, "he's gone. The cowboys roped him and broke him."
"Oh no," she says. "Where'd they take his body?" "Maintenance has him up at the barn," we say. "What are they going to do with him?" she asks.
"I hope they bury him," the anthropologist says. "They can't leave him laying around up there. It will just lead to more destruction. They have to put him away."
And that is how my college got a graveyard for polyresin animals. If you need yours buried, just let us know. We have a place for him.
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