What in the heck is that? I discovered mutton busting at the local Labor Day rodeo. Helmville is a Montana town so small that the United States post office shared the same building structure as the local church. Past that turn was a dip in the valley where hundreds of cowboys/girls, cars, and farm animals gathered for quite the event. I've only been to one other rodeo in my life (this summer in Missoula), but this was definitely my favorite.Mutton busting consists of a child being placed on a sheep, which is then turned loose into the arena. Since sheep are herd animals, they have one or two sheep 20 feet away, so that the sheep that was just released will run towards something. That kid hangs on for dear life, and I have never seen anything like it. Once the kid (all wear a helmet) falls off, the sheep runs and leaps to find the rest of the herd. Several of the sheep lept 3 or 4 feet in the air, happy to be free of the extra weight, and then immediately ran to find the rest of the herd, grouped by the small patch of grass in the corner on the other side of the arena.
"Cowboy Eric" was pretty tough. He wore a white cowboy hat, wrangler jeans, cowboy boots, and a flannel snapshirt. Don't let the fact that he's 7-years-old fool you. "I hope I get a mean one," he said with a squint in his eye before the event. That kid was born for rodeo.
The only man I've ever heard talk faster than the announcer yesterday was the guy on the commercial for micro machines that used to constantly run on TV in the 80's. The announcer knew his crowd, and made the joke, "Here in Montana. We get together on a nice Labor Day afternoon and entertain ourselves by puttin' our kids on large farm animals." The crowd laughed good humoredly.
I watched each of these kids get placed on a different sheep one at a time as the sheep ran into whatever it could find of the herd. Most of the children immediately fell off, jumped off, or ran off. Not "Cowboy Eric." He wouldn't let go until his dad and the other adults told him he could. He would have ridden that sheep all over the arena, even over to the far corner of the arena with the rest of the herd. When the competition was over, "Cowboy Eric" swaggered back, wearing his prize, a blue camouflage baseball cap that read "Helmville Mutton Busting 2009" in white lettering. I shook my head and said to his mother, "'Cowboy Eric's' gonna be a heart breaker."
Micro machine guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzbUPfoveok
Mutton busting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutton_busting
