A turn of phrase is fun, but when it becomes an entire book, lowlighting the cleverness of a writer, it becomes a mind tangle that is not fun at all.
I found an e book concerning mules, and as I like mules as most people do not, I was interested in the volume, but it was as bad as that Gorilla Hunters book as it was filled with too much, too much.
I did though glean from it the interesting parts to me, and have pasted below the interesting information.
Mules are interesting cross bred creatures for a jack with a horse mare. The net result is an intelligent, passionate and complex animal. A mule will appear half asleep with lids closed as you harness them, but at the moment you hook the tug to the single tree, you find an iron mule shoe imprinted upon your shattered skull.
There is a record of mule injuries below that the government paid Civil War employees, but my wonder is how many people were killed outright, because a mule kicked them in the head. Not a heroic death, but a death all the same, as it is a given that those who had to harness a team of mules were in more danger than those who fought the wars.
A total of 450,000 mules and 650,000 horses served in the various armies. In 1864, the forces actually in the field required for artillery, cavalry and trains one-half as many animals as there were soldiers.
Henry A. Castle. The Army Mule and Other War Sketches (Kindle Locations 216-217).
his aspect was liable to be as one-sided as a Louisiana riot— seventeen negroes killed and one white man wounded.
Henry A. Castle. The Army Mule and Other War Sketches (Kindle Locations 164-165).
One out-thrust of his right front foot has been known to reduce a newly uniformed soldier to a state of nudity from his napless crown to his callous sole, with incidental contusions of flesh and abrasions of cuticle too hideous for contemplation.
Henry A. Castle. The Army Mule and Other War Sketches (Kindle Locations 226-228).
Lincoln, when informed that a general and forty Mules had been captured by the enemy, put on that far-away, lodge-of-sorrow look and plaintively remarked: "I am sorry to lose the Mules."
Henry A. Castle. The Army Mule and Other War Sketches (Kindle Locations 458-459).
The Army Mule's market value or cost to the government ranged from one hundred and fifteen to one hundred and fifty dollars.
Henry A. Castle. The Army Mule and Other War Sketches (Kindle Locations 461-462).
Nearly a thousand men, mostly teamsters, buglers and hospital stewarts, toothless but terrible, have been pensioned since the war for lameness caused by the kick of a Mule's hoof iron,
Henry A. Castle. The Army Mule and Other War Sketches (Kindle Locations 476-477).
in May, 1865, the Confederate army consisted of Kirby Smith, four Mules and a base drum, moving rapidly toward Texas.
Henry A. Castle. The Army Mule and Other War Sketches (Kindle Locations 501-502).
The Army Mule's strategic value was recognized throughout the whole corrugated surface of the Kenesaw region, and everywhere else within the lines of active operation. It was tersely expressed by General George H. Thomas when he said: "The fate of an army sometimes depends on a linch-pin."
Henry A. Castle. The Army Mule and Other War Sketches (Kindle Locations 510-512).
The army train was a baffling understudy. Six patient, faithful Mules were attached to each creaking big blue wagon , with a high , white canvas cover. Thirteen wagons were, during the first two years of the war, allotted to a regiment of infantry; six to a battery of artillery.
One hundred teams occupy a mile of road. Thus an army of seventy-five thousand men are followed when marching by a wagon-train eighteen miles long, hauled by Mules.
Henry A. Castle. The Army Mule and Other War Sketches (Kindle Locations 516-520).
Ten pounds of grain and thirty pounds of hay is the daily allowance.
Henry A. Castle. The Army Mule and Other War Sketches (Kindle Locations 565-566).
I have always felt bad for the equine of war, as they end up dead or injured in hideous ways, and none of them asked for it from loyal animals to those which should be shot.
Nothing though seems so forlorn though as a mule, which crosses a stream, gets water in it's ears and just lays down and dies, as that is just more trauma and drama than the poor beast could take.
It is amazing how every lot of "trained mules" coming to the Army and Teamsters, all had one thing in common, and that was none of them were trained at anything, but trying to kill the human who stupidly came near to them, and that required no training.
Yes to throw a mule on the ground with all of it's parts thrashing to kill something, to then be harnessed, pulled away after a rope was put around the bottom lip to make them at least follow, to be hitched and then become another mass of six mules bound by leather and rolling upon the earth, as that is what mules do instead of pulling a wagon at first, is a mule's education which with a nice US brand on the shoulder, forever marks their intelligent minds to what life is.
Life is nothing more than a man in love, as men and mules tend to fall in love with the damnedest things, and if not for a bell mare to save them from themselves, they both end up following something enticing over a cliff.
No man can adequately realize what magnificent folly he is capable of until he sees his own old love-letters set forth in the cold, cruel print of some hideous newspaper.
Henry A. Castle. The Army Mule and Other War Sketches (Kindle Locations 546-547).
I did find it interesting in the wagons were painted blue, and what a starvation ration in the Army was for an equine, providing that equine could graze upon something more to feed itself.
it is always safe to suspect the man that a Mule hates.
Henry A. Castle. The Army Mule and Other War Sketches (Kindle Locations 694-695).
The same can be said if the Lame Cherry hates you, that the fault is in you, and if the hate is against the Lame Cherry, then it is your weakness and failings bringing the emotional outburst as you are the one who should be hating yourself.
nuff said
agtG
