In Jail for Dog Tax

New York, 1895

Gustave Ritchenbach, a farmer, living at West Hills, near Huntington, was taken to the county jail in Riverhead Wednesday morning in default of $5 dog tax and $8.25 costs. A tax is levied on dogs in the town of Huntington, but great difficulty has always been experienced in its collection. Recently the town authorities agreed to rigidly enforce the tax. The amount realized by this tax is used to reimburse farmers whose sheep get killed presumably by dogs.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, N.Y., Jan. 18, 1895, unknown page number.

Faithful Shepherd Dogs

1901

A cold spell in Montana killed a sheep herder in the Great Falls district. Two feet of snow covered the range in places, and the thermometer indicated 40 degrees below zero. The herder was frozen to death on the prairies while caring for the sheep, and it was three days before his fate was known to his employers.

Two shepherd dogs were with him when he died, and one of these stayed with his body while the other attended to the sheep, just as though the herder had been with him. The dog drove them out on the range in the morning and back again at night, guarding them from wolves and preventing them from straying off.

Neither dog had anything to eat during the three days' vigil, so far as could be ascertained, but the 2,500 sheep thrived as well apparently as though directed by human agency. The singular fact about the matter is that these faithful creatures would have starved to death rather than harm one of the sheep left in their charge. — Portland Oregonian.

Captured Baby Lynx

1905

W. W. Bridges of Athens, while hunting recently, came upon a peculiar track of some animal, which he followed. He captured the animal, which is pronounced by people who profess to know to be a baby lynx, a very fine specimen, weighing 22½ pounds and measuring four feet from tip to tip.


Boat Made From Paper

In Vienna a paper boat, sixteen feet long, has been built out of the back numbers of a leading daily paper of that city. Hull, spars and sails have all been made from the pulped brains of the literary staff. Four hundred thousand copies of this journal will make a yacht — sails and all.


Many Sheep From Colorado

One hundred thousand sheep will be prepared for the market this winter at the beet-sugar factories in the vicinity of Eaton, Greeley, Windsor, Longmount, Fort Collins and Loveland, Col. The beet pulp makes the best of feed for lambs.


Cost of Removing Snow

Removing snow in New York City is a large item in the city's annual expense bill. It costs about $35,000 for every inch of recorded snowfall. Last year it cost the city $755,000 to remove the snow from the streets. The average fall in New York is thirty inches, but though the snow season hardly has begun, twenty-three inches have fallen this winter, and the cost this season promises to reach considerably over $1,000,000.

Grizzlies Feast on Sheep

1905

Early one frosty October morning when the little Nimrod was sitting in a crevice of the mountain's side basking in the sun he espied way down in the valley three grizzlies, says a writer in the Metropolitan. From the former trailing he had done he knew them to be a great male and two females as his mates.

As the boy watched them he says that they went off in different directions, one ascending the face of the opposite mountain, while the other two worked their way around either side of its base before commencing the ascent. As he watched them he noticed that while the bear that was climbing up the mountain's face took things leisurely the other two were going much faster and that they were heading up toward the back of the mountain.

The lad, wondering what the bears were about, began to scan the mountain and discovered a band of big-horn sheep feeding on the mountain's front very near the top. Standing Wolf felt sure that something of interest was about to happen, so he watched the bears and the sheep attentively. After awhile, when the lower bear, the only one now in view, had climbed to a point which revealed him to the sheep, they became restless and began to ascend rapidly. Whenever the bear was seen to quicken his pace the big-horns would at once quicken theirs.

Up, up, up the rugged precipice they scurried and ever faster followed the bear. After an exhausting ascent of the steepest cliff on the mountain's side the band gained the top and for a second rested. Then, as two great forms rushed out among them, confusion seized the herd and they dashed away in all directions, many leaping panic-stricken over the precipice.

A moment later, after having killed the couple they had seized, two grizzly bears that had ascended the back of the mountain waddled forward to the edge of the cliff and, stared down at their accomplice feasting upon sheep that had been mangled upon the crags below.

Australian Sheepdogs Are Marvels at Their Work

1915

Have Been Brought to a High Degree of Intelligence

Sheepdog trials may be considered a national pastime if not a national sport in Australia. There is an annual agricultural show in every town and village in the pastoral parts. There are general competitions on the lines of the American county and state fairs. There are horse races, buck jumping, shearing, log chopping, and other strenuous competitions.

But not one of these excites more interest than the sheepdog trials; and in these tests Australians have set the example of certain of the most serious tasks that a man and a dog may be asked to accomplish with three strange sheep — sheep that they had never previously met until they had a moment before been turned out from three separate pens to be packed or gathered together by the dog.

It was the Australians who first put forward, and they still maintain it, the maltese cross test. The eight six-foot hurdles are set in the shape of a maltese cross. The passages are of a width that will permit only one sheep to pass through at a time. The animals have to be driven north and south and east and west, all the passes being open at the time. The skill and patience of the dog are here tried to the utmost, and there can be little wonder there is a gasp of satisfaction and a cheer of joy when the sheep have been successfully driven through these narrow ways.

The Australian sheepdogs are the smallest in use in the world, but are quick and lively in their work. It is no wonder that the Australian gives much thought for his dogs, for it goes without saying that the work of the sheep station could not be accomplished without them. In ordinary cases it is reckoned that one dog can do the work of half a dozen men; in many instances a dog is superior to 50 humans; and where there are such vast flocks of nimble sheep, such as the merinos in Australia are, it would be impossible without the dogs to round them up so that they may be examined, counted, and duly looked over.

Mountain Lions and Wolves Annoy Stockmen

1906

Cattle and Sheep Destroyed in Oklahoma by Animals from Game Preserve

Washington. — The Wichita reserve in Oklahoma, which President Roosevelt set apart as a refuge for game, is overrun with wolves and mountain lions, and many complaints have been received from cattle and sheep raisers.

John Goff, the hunter who acted as the president's guide on his hunting trip of a year ago, even with his skill, has not been able to exterminate the lions, and cattlemen and sheep raisers are hoping that the president will make another trip to that section and that he will bring with him all his friends capable of handling a rifle.

Practically similar conditions exist in the Gila reservation in New Mexico. Stockmen complain that because of the establishment of these reserves where wolves and mountain lions take refuge and cannot be hunted, they have increased to such an extent as seriously to threaten their business. Before the establishment of game refuges, stockmen by offering bounties for the scalps of wolves and mountain lions managed to keep them down.

Stockmen say that unless the government takes some action looking toward the extermination of these beasts it will not be possible for them to continue grazing their herds in or near the reserves.

Facts Recorded in Wool

1896

"The sheep from which that wool was cut," said a wool commission man on Michigan street, "didn't have enough to eat during February and March. How can I tell? Why there is a weak spot in the wool which was made during those months. Anything which affects the growth of the sheep, whether prolonged dry weather in the summer or disease or want of food in the winter, will show in the wool just as accurately as the heat or cold is shown in a thermometer."

"The wool business," he continued, is like every other; it is full of little details that are surprising to an outsider. You ask any wool dealer who has ever handled New England wool and he will tell you the clippings of sheep from the same breed on opposite sides of the Connecticut River, one in New Hampshire and the other in Vermont, differ from each other. On one side of the river is a granite soil and on the other a limestone soil, and the difference in grass grown on these two soils makes a difference in the wool. Now, the rich black prairies of Illinois make a wool from the same family of sheep which is quite a little coarser than the wool of the sheep grown on the finer grass of Ohio and Pennsylvania. The fiber of the Illinois wool is not so clear, dense or strong as that produced in Ohio." — Free Press.

Home Made Poems by Sara Kenugen – "Mary's Lamb"

1928

HOME MADE POEMS
By SARA KENUGEN

MARY'S LAMB

Our Mary had a little lamb,
'Twas made into a fur.
And tho the day was boiling hot,
It always hung on her.

One day she wore her lamy lam,
To church, which was quite near;
When, lo, the choir began to sing,
"There'll be no necking here."

Our Mary then was hopping mad,
And tossed her head in air.
You go to ...... Celeron she said,
You'll find a plenty there.

She visited a candy store,
And met a nicey man;
He said "altho" it's very warm,
You wear your lamy lam.

This was too much for Mary dear,
So home she straightway ran;
And on the floor she threw,
Which came from lamy lam.

A playful pup awaiting near,
Mischievous work began,
And soon a bunch of fuzz was left,
Of what was Mary's lamb.

Mr. Editor:
You cannot make a lady's hand bag out of a sow's ear, let alone a whistle from a pig's tail. The Creator never made MAN his masterpiece to be a church deacon in the morning and to eat apples with Eve in the evening.
Yours,
SARA.

—The Warren Tribune, Warren, Pennsylvania, September 8, 1928, page. 3.