Digging Up Dead Reptiles - Part 2

By Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray

As a condition for obtaining permission to dig for dinosaur remains on the privately owned land we had to offer our services to the ranch in a purely cowboy capacity. This translated into, among other things, branding and castrating 250 head of cattle. We got off easy, in a few weeks after our departure date the ranch expected another 400 head. I've had a number of jobs, some were tough, physically demanding and required a certain amount of pain and suffering. Working on a ranch makes the top five. I used to work in a restaurant across the street from a cowboy bar in Colorado. Every Saturday, around midnight, there would be a fight in that bar. It never failed. Police and bloody drunken cowboys standing in the street. They got one day off a week, Sunday and most of the time spent it hungover and nursing wounds. I'm telling you, cowboys, the real ones that work ranches not the John Travolta urban, fake bull riding kind, are tough bastards.

The groups original enthusiasm, fueled by ignorance and images of Billy Crystal cracking jokes and bringing in the herd, drained quickly. See, the cowboys thought it would be funny to show us the adult cattle first at which point we would scared shitless by the size of them. For some it worked, I have to admit to being a bit more on the ball for noticing these cattle were already branded. After the laughter faded they led us to a pen in the back where 250 mooing adversaries awaited us.

The process isn't all that tough in theory. Heat up some metal pokers, rope a cow, wrestle it to the ground and slap a logo on it. The problem is that a three hundred pound bull doesn't want a logo burned into it. More importantly, I found this out the hard way, this same three hundred pound bull likes it's balls attached thank you very much. The cowboys felt it would be more fun to surprise us with the castration and blue antiseptic part of the days events.

So first they show you how to do the all important cow punch. It takes more than one person, depending on the size of the punchers it can take several. One person holds the head and one person holds the hind quarters. All the fun is in the legs. Holding the head isn't anything special, at best you might get bitten-- but holding the back legs of a pissed off bull that wants nothing more than to kick a hole in your face as cowboy Bob takes a penknife to it's privates, that's where the Yee Haw comes in. If you happen to be a card carrying member of PETA I'm sorry...you may want to skip the rest of this column.

Bit of advice, don't let a bull kick you in the chest, it leaves a mark.

21DOWN #6 in stores the first week of February The writing team of Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti have a tale of possible government conspiracies and/or cover-ups; a mad man running around granting young people powers, only to have them die went they reach age 21, a budding romance between possibly the most interesting characters that I have read in a long time; and an envious/glory seeking older brother. Am I forgetting something? All that in just five tightly compacted issues! -HeroRealm This one took me by surprise. I expected it to be an interesting read, but I thought the really great work for Wildstorm was going to be done on the mature readers books. Instead, 21 Down is probably the strongest launch from the new Wildstorm, a type of story that boasts cinematic influences other than Michael Bay or Bryan Singer, and opens up the super-hero genre further for those who aren't interested in the standard cape and tights." -Randy Lander The 4th Rail This book could have easily been a Vertigo title, although it's crossing so many genres that I can see why it's WildStorm. Fans of 100 BULLETS, Y THE LAST MAN, or just about any mature superhero title should check this out. -Johanna Draper Carlson - Comics Worth Reading

So there we were in the hot sun, caked in dust and sweat and a stink of burning cow fur and flesh jammed up in our nostrils. My shoes were sprayed a nice blue color from the antiseptic and covered in bits of testicle and FLIES the size of footballs. I have to tell you it's fun, it doesn't sound like it what with the dirt and blood and smell, but I promise it's a blast. Your adrenaline is pumping, if you make a mistake you can be hurt badly so you focus all your attention on the task at hand. Originally I thought the unearthing of the triceratops was going to be an unbeatable experience. Well, punching cattle beats sitting under a plastic tarp in 115 degree heat using a toothbrush to scrape away dirt.

The rancher's family was huge and everyone was there, I'm talking cousins, nephews, little cowboys, old cowboys, cowgirls, everyone helping out in one way or another. If you tried to get my family and extended family together in the same place for a project you couldn't get them to screw in a light bulb properly. The rancher and his family also happened to be polite, generous, fun loving happy people. Intoxicatingly happy people that you know will never need antidepressants and couchtime with a shrink. That whole mythos of the Norman Rockwell painting down to Earth god fearing American dream does exist. You have to be raised with it though, my NY friends would be bored out of their minds in two weeks.

After the branding, castrating and cow punching was complete they invited us into their home for dinner. It was the kind of massive spread of home cooking you see in a Chevy truck commercial, checkered tablecloth, piled and piles of home cooked food that tasted better than anything I could explain. Consider that for an entire week I'd been eating stew in a bag and what amounts to astronaut food. Not that I minded, you can get used to it especially when camping in the middle of nowhere. The meal was topped off with another special treat taken for granted: a shower. What an amazing thing indoor plumbing is.