Reporter's Notebook: Wyoming has an East infection

Wednesday, August 04, 2010

By Jake Nichols

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-Last Wednesday when Jack the steer up and died right there in the middle of the county fair, the 18-year-old side of beef dropped dead under the informational sign posted on his cage with nomenclature “Texas Longhorn.”
“Sometimes animals die,” his owner Bunky Boger said.

Boger respectfully covered the beast with a tarp so as not to traumatize the kids, and made preparations to have Jack removed that night. He should have worried about traumatizing the adults.

Not long after Jack’s passing, the cops showed up – according to Boger, two Jackson police officers arrived and asked him if he had had an “incident.”
“I never would have dreamed they were talking about the steer,” Boger said. “So I told them ‘No, I don’t believe I have.’”

Boger was astounded to find out the officers were indeed referring to the death of one of his animals and was even more flabbergasted to learn the “incident” was being treated as a “criminal investigation.” The owner of Animal Specialties was then questioned as to the steer’s access to water, feeding schedule and veterinary care.

Boger told the officers he operated under the jurisdiction of the Wyoming Department of Agriculture and did not have to answer to local law enforcement, whose interrogation soon turned to the “stressed looking chickens.”
“I tried to tell them nobody was more broken up over this than me,” Boger recounted. “Don’t they think it is in my best interests to see to the welfare of my animals?”

Boger treats his 180-or-so critters as part assets and part pets. He and his wife Connie regularly have one of the commodities, like a goat or a bird, living in their home with them in Lowell, Ark. when they are off the road. They show up on the optimistic side of a ledger too. One that Boger runs successfully as a traveling petting zoo for state and county fairs. In a business admittedly fraught with bad apples, Boger’s outfit is the cleanest, the kindest and the best.

Still, everywhere he pitches his big top someone will inevitably ask him about the conditions the animals live in. “Are they hungry?” “Do they get to play?” One lady even asked if they removed the massive set of horns on the Watusi so he could sleep more comfortably.

Bunky answers every ludicrous question with honesty and patience. After all, they come from uniformed city folk who have lost touch with the land that provides our daily sustenance. Just like there are school kids who can't find Nebraska on a map of the U.S. without Google, there is a generation that believes milk and meat come from the “store.”

Boger’s sole mission with a petting zoo is not the exploitation of animals but rather to educate those who didn’t grow up in a 4H program; providing them with the chance to feed and pet the creatures animal activists try so hard to protect. Easterners who hate rodeos because PETA tells them to or West Coasters who despise hunters because they shoot “Bambi” can sometimes be self-righteous only because they don’t know any better.

It is interesting and a bit ironic that just a few days after Jack the steer died, 4H kids watched as their steers, lambs and pigs were loaded into a hauler headed for slaughter. Animals these kids named, trained, fattened and fussed over since last fall. Every year,  more than a few watery eyes abound, but never a cop or a protester.

This “incident” at the fair and the minor stir it caused reflects the shift in Western attitudes and way of life that threatens to ultimately homogenize the West that attracted us. The invasion of ‘culture’ that has gained a foothold in Wyoming via Teton County is troubling to cowboys and cowgirls who may on occasion find reason to eat, wear, ride, or love an animal. JHW


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Reporter's Notebook: Wyoming has an East infection | Planet JH News Article: Editorial

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