Tag Archives: Bighorn sheep

Boys Are Different Than Girls

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You know when girls get together to hang out it’s all “oooh, I like your shoes” and “Have you lost weight?” and “How’s your no-good husband?” They have an easy manner about them that is definitely girlie. They have no need for all of this physical masculine kind of stuff that guys do.

Guys on the other hand are different. For one thing they don’t give rat’s hind end about each others shoes or whether you’ve lost weight unless you have and they no longer get to call you ‘Lardo”. That can be a topic of conversation for a moment or two. “Hey Lardo, Whatcha doing, losing weight, ya toad-bastard.” Guys also have a much more physical way of greeting each other, high-fives, bumping fists, and in some cases rearing back and slamming their heads together as hard as they can. This is normally reserved for guys you know well and like. If this is done by someone you don’t know or like very much, you normally just shoot them.

The last time I saw two girls rear back and slam their heads together it was in a bar in Singapore. Now that was something. I’ve still got scars from that night. But it is not girls normal behavior. Some of the communication difficulties between men and women stem from the fact that guys are just different. For the most part guys don’t get it that women don’t understand that guys tend to be less delicate than they are and as such they act differently. Just ask any cage-fighter. They’ll tell you that if you can’t butt heads with a buddy you ain’t squat. Now if you tell that to a girl she’ll just look at you as if you are from another planet, says Mars for instance, and need serious therapy.

Well, I’ve thought about it and it’s a mystery we’re not going to solve today so I say ” You leave us to our head butting and we’ll leave you to talk about your no-good husbands.” and by the way, your shoes don’t make you look fat.

Just Two Guys

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“Whoa, Dude, that was some winter. Did you think we were going to make it?”

“No man, I thought we were toast there in February. You ever been that cold?”

“Un Unh Dude, I felt like condensed lichen pellets.”

“You know man, this spring sun makes me feel kinda twitchy, I can’t stop chewing my cud”

“Dude Don’t sweat it, chewing your cud is normal. I saw old Cracked Horn chewing his cud and he’s a full curl.”

“Yeah man but I’m chewing it as fast as I can all the time. That can’t be normal.”

“Just mellow out dude. How many kids you got now?”

“In this herd? Eleven man, but I got three on the way. Four, if Ms. Cloven Hoof is carrying twins like last year. How about you?”

“I’m not doing so hot dude, I went up against old Cracked Horn again. I still got ringing in my ears and I have to be really careful when I’m up on the face of High Step cuz my left eye is still fuzzy.”

“The trick with Cracked Horn man, is you got to watch him, just before he hits you he lifts his muzzle up too high and if you step off to the right and drop your horn you can catch him right across his nose. He usually stops for awhile after that. That’s how come I might be having twins with Ms. Cloven hoof.”

“Dude, I have never noticed that! He’s going down this fall.”

“Watch it man, here he comes. Probably going to tell us how he beat that ram from the Snowlot herd again. I am SO sick of that story.”

“Hey Cracked, how’s it going? Lay down and chew the cud for awhile.”

ManySheep

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One of the things you notice about petroglyphs after you see a few of them is their sameness. This is not a bad thing, but there seems to have been an accepted way for their artists to portray the subject matter regardless of the geographical location. That has always seemed odd to me. Did they have an art school where young stone drawing artists were sent to learn the proper way to draw Bighorn Sheep and then returned home to their tribe to chronicle the information in the proscribed way ? The subjects are all approximately the same physical size on the rock, you never see close-ups of a Bighorn sheep’s head for instance or any variation for that matter, yet these images may be several hundred miles apart, a really significant distance when you consider they walked everywhere and a ten mile jaunt would be huge distance to travel for the average inhabitant to make unless they were relocating. It might be the origin of a guild system where the resident artist took a young apprentice under their tutelage and soundly drilled the basics into them so there wouldn’t be any variation and the information from the image would then be available to anyone seeing it. None of this three-legged sheep with one horn business to confuse the viewer. But even if this happened why didn’t different schools of art develop. That would be a natural condition. One guy who drew the legs a little longer than his teacher so that eventually you would have the long legged Bighorn school of art group and then a form of regional art, but this never seemed to have happened. I know that in Japan the art of Ukiyo-e or wood block printing was taught in this way, a guild system, and the young students were shown the proper way to draw just one line that would be the start of a face or hand, no deviation, do it exactly as shown or you ran the risk of getting your rice bowl broken and you heaved out into the street. Unfortunately I don’t have the answers but I think it’s high time we perfected this time travel thing so that we could go back and get some of these mysteries solved. Deep thoughts, I know, and its a Monday too. In the meantime, questions or not, I can enjoy the beauty of these ancient images for what they are, and share them with you.