In doing some background reading for my newest research/writing project I ran across an anecdote that interested me. It told of a teamster/bullwhacker in the nineteenth century who, while trying to yoke one of his oxen, got hooked under his chin by the critter’s horn, lifted aloft, and carried around the corral area until help arrived. According to the story teller he recovered but was forced to eat mush for the rest of his life. I thought that was a singular event until yesterday when I found this story. A Spanish bullfighter entered the ring and worked to subdue the bull - as they usually do. The bull hooked him, but much worse than the man in the aforementioned tale, the tip of the bull’s horn pierced the soft skin of the bullfighter’s throat and exited through the man’s mouth. He survived with the help of a surgeon but is in pretty tough shape. Readers of this blog can find several references to the event by googling the words “bullfighter gored in neck.” The pictures are graphic and might make you squeamish. I thought to myself that we can’t blame the animal in either case for doing something in his self-defense.
So much of interest to be found when I poke around history. In my opening line I mentioned my current research/writing project. The place name of Pigeon Point in Owego Township will receive some attention because it was an overnight stop between Forts Abercrombie and Ransom on the freight trail. Why the name Pigeon Point? In my reading I found where one of the old-timers related as to how numerous the passenger pigeons roosted in the trees at that spot. That species is now extinct, but still in the 1860’s and 70’s they were numerous. The famous John James Audubon spoke of them. He set about trying to count them one day and gave up after tallying 163 flocks having passed him in 21 minutes. He said, “The air was literally filled with pigeons; the light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse, the dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow…” He did some estimating over the next three hours that if the flock was one mile wide and traveled at the rate of a mile a minute, allowing two pigeons to the square yard, that one billion, one hundred and fifteen million, one hundred and thirty-six thousand passed by. The flight of pigeons he observed lasted for three days. I don’t know how accurate he was, but there surely were a lot of pigeons in the air.
And, to finish off with another story of impalement one of the old settlers writing in the WPA history project in the 1930’s told of the family Thomas Wilson, the first settlers in my home township of Greene who farmed just a short while before moving into the just-platted town of Sheldon in 1882. Wilson went to work for storekeepers Goodman and Grange as a butcher. One day he butchered 100 hogs in a fenced enclosure and stuck each severed head on one of the posts, “a very queer looking sight it was!”
