The Hanging Tree Saloon

On Thursdays, during the day, I’ve been know to stop in at the Hanging Tree in Bracken, Texas.  It’s about as traditional as a Texas beer joint, dance hall can get.  The building and the patrons are a little seedy, the beer is cheap and cold.  The Thursday crowd is made up of a combination of retired cops, retired military, retired probation officers and current gentlemen ranchers.

As I stood on the from porch this morning watching the squirrels cavorting in the trees.  It occurred to me that I had never been victimized by squirrels in the same manner as many birds. At the Hanging Tree I had a group with probably 200 years of combined outdoor experience, the perfect place to begin my investigation.

During a lull in the conversation, I put forth the question, ” Have any of you ever been shit on by a squirrel?” A lessor group would have subjected me to derision and cat calls. I was met by silence, this is a group of men and women that are able to grasp a scientific inquiry and treat it with the respect it deserves. After due consideration I had my first answer, no body present had ever been shit upon by a squirrel. Had anybody ever seen a squirrel shit?  Again, silence.  So we couldn’t say whether a squirrel became earthbound for such an essential function or just hung his butt off the edge of a branch and let gravity take its course.

Bubba allowed that he couldn’t say for sure that he had ever seen squirrel shit.  Slim stated that he could identify cow, horse, sheep, goat and dog shit.  Juan added deer, rabbit, raccoon and possum shit to the list. We all agreed with  feces familiarity as listed.

Throw the question out there to your friends who have answer for everything. When it stumps them like it did the gang at the Hanging Tree, you can truthfully point out that they don’t know shit.