The Fuzzy Slippers

*This actually happened to me last year.

Some blamed the incident on her fuzzy slippers.

I was raised a top hand and, like many ranch women, am especially good at calving heifers. Because of my skill and stamina, myself and my house mate, R.C., had synchronized 110 first- calf heifers to calve within a two week period. Of course, when the heifers were bred, we didn't anticipate those two weeks would fall in a period of clear skies and what felt like 40 degrees below zero.
I kept two horses saddled in the barn, each on a 12 hour shift. I checked the heifer lot night and day, almost hourly, nipping back in the warm house for a bite or a nap. I'd slip off my hat, Carhartt overalls and boots, then dive under the electric blanket. I slept in what I wore under the Carhartts, a T-shirt and underwear- "granny" underwear, Hanes Her Way, three in a pack for $2, which I got at Wal-Mart in Cleburne.
By the second week, I was a zombie. During one particularly cold night I woke, dressed and walked to the corral. I noticed as I was mounting my horse that I was still wearing my fuzzy pink slippers. "So what," my frozen jaw muscle mumbled.
Riding into the heifer lot, I found a new baby steaming in the frigid air. I slid a loop around his hind legs, swung to the saddle and began skidding him toward the calving jugs in the barn. Momma followed. As I passed through the gate, something went wrong. The calf's feet went to the inside of the post, the rope to the outside, snagging it in a perfect "V". It stopped the horse; he swiveled in his borium shoes to the left, snugged the rope under his tail and threw a fit! I pitched my slack in the rope, grabbed for the saddle horn, reared back and pointed my fuzzy clad toes in a sort of "Michelin Man imitates Gjermunson".
the horse continued to buck as the 35 foot rope snaked itself free, steaming, writhing and throwing smoke from under the horse's tail, not unlike an 822 pound marlin, sounding and taking the line back from Ernest Hemmingway's whining reel!
I came out over the front of the horse and into the frozen ice, snow and frozen manure. I careened, luge-like into a small snowbank, my fuzzy slippers disappearing and the handy opening openings on the side of the Carhartts packing with snow, from my grannies to my sockless ankles.
Back in the living room R.C. was sympathetic, "He's never bucked before," he said, "It must've been the fuzzy slippers."
The following fall, one of the guilty slippers was found by a dove hunter in a coyote den 2 miles from the house. "Bet there's a story behind this," he thought, "bound to be."