Trail's End

Like all good wranglers the Rabbit Wrangler brought his herd to market. In this case it was the Champions Livestock Sale at the Montgomery County Junior Fair. If you haven't been to one of these you should know this is Americana at its best. I've never known much about 4-H or the FFA, but I think they get it and are really good for young people to be involved with. Anyway I digress as they say.

The sale started off with the Grand Champion Steer and went from there. In case your wondering what kind of money is involved the steer sold for $6000.00. That's pretty expensive hamburger. Everything went well until the Reserve Champion Steer decided to bolt during the photo op after being sold (guess he didn't care for the hamburger idea). After he was corralled and everything calmed down the sale proceeded smoothly. It was finally show time for the Rabbit Wrangler and we had no clue what these rabbits would fetch. Well after a lot of lively bidding the auctioneer dropped the gavel at $750.00. My mouth dropped open, and my only comment was "for three rabbits". I did a quick calculation and found out that was about $79/lb vs. $4.38/lb. for the champion steer. As the Wrangler's grandmother said "we don't have any dummies in the family. We learned later that the rabbits were going for breding stock and not stew.

After all the hoopla everyone was kinda of wiped out and realized it was going to be back to normal on Tuesday with school, and all the other things a nine year old does. Frankly, I think they were all kinda of relieved and ready for that to happen. Being a rabbit wrangler at that level is pretty tough when you've never done it before.

I don't know if 4-H is in the future for 2011 but it was a great experience for all this year.

PS - One funny thing happened during the auction. There are a number of Ring Men who work the crowd and try to get the bidding as high as possible. These guys are good at what they do and have eyes like hawks, and can pick up any little movement in the crowd. You should have seen the look on the face of a women when see realized she had bid $1100 on a goat while waving to a friend across the barn. The auctioneer realized the error and didn't drop the gavel on her because she would have been the highest bid. To say she was relieved is an understatement. I guess she had no place to walk it.