The unseasonably cold winter weather has played havoc with cowboys and cattle in Arkansas.
Frozen ponds become undetectable death traps for livestock that wander out and have no idea what’s going on.
On Thursday, Jan. 18, a lifelong cowboy from Paragould was called to avert a potentially fatal situation using his lasso.
It turns out, a stray calf had wandered out onto a frozen lake where thin ice placed the animal in imminent danger and made rescuing it precarious.
The owner of the calf, John Lane, called Max Bishop, 57, who responded, arriving at about 8:30 a.m. with 75 feet of rope and a lasso to save the day.
Not your stereotypical wrangler, Mr. Bishop fancies social media—and so the cowboy had Mr. Lane’s worker Caleb Allbritton hold his phone to record him as he got to work doing some real cowboying.
As Mr. Bishop recently had surgery for a torn bicep on his arm, there were a few hang-ups; his rope looped the calf but got pulled out onto the ice. Fortunately, he had a second rope handy.
He is seen in the clip executing some fancy lasso moves, whirling it overhead and tossing the rope farther than one would think was possible.
The first throw misses, but the second one manages to snare a leg, and he successfully drags the animal across the ice safely back to shore.
Mr. Bishop, who has been a cowboy “pretty much all [his] life,” has come to expect such hazardous situations—every few winters.
“We’ve had about a week and a half of just ice and snow and below freezing,” he told The Epoch Times, adding that the mercury has dropped as low as 6 degrees. “It usually happens every other two or three years, and it’ll usually last a couple days.”
In instances like this where there is thin ice, they’ve had other calves and cows break through and drown, only to be found floating belly-up later and having to be pulled out. The calf was melting a hole in the ice, he said, and they were getting “pretty concerned.”
“So it’s good we caught this one in time,” he said. “It wasn’t that big a calf, and it didn’t break through the ice. It turned out good. But it’s a real dangerous time of year in our area.”
Of lesser concern, but weighing on the cowboy’s mind nonetheless, the calf’s worried mom was heard mooing angrily in the background.
“She was really getting upset and mad,” the cowboy said. “So there was a concern that mom was going to come down that levee and just run over me.”
It’s not like on TV where the mom responds: “Oh, thank you for rescuing my baby!” he said. The calf was reunited with its mother before being brought into a nice warm truck to thaw out.
And although cowboys are famous for being rugged and manly, the unseasonable chill has gotten under their thick skin. With wet boots and blue jeans from the half-frozen lakeshore, Mr. Bishop had to warm up afterward.
“My hands are pretty cold,” he told the newspaper.
