You’re Just A One-Lapper

Veterinarians categorized post-dosed mules as one-lappers, two-lappers, and three-lappers

You’re Just A One-Lapper

Of the mule, novelist William Faulkner once said, “He labors six days without reward for one creature, whom he hates, bound with chains to another, whom he despises, and spends the seventh day kicking or being kicked by his fellows.”

My lifelong best friend and mentor Jaybird could attest to the great writer’s observations. The old black man spent many days bound with chains to mules that despised him.

Back then, when mules fell ill, the treatment was “drenching,” a highly effective cure for mule maladies, quite often because it killed them. The medicine administered in drenching was sweet spirits of niter — a fiery concoction consisting of potassium nitrate and anhydrous alcohol.

To get the medication into a mule, veterinarians first rendered him tractable with a cruel devise known as a nose twister. With the dose in a long-necked bottle, the animal doctor and his assistant climbed into the barn’s loft and pulled the patient’s head upward with the twister.

While the assistant held the mule’s tongue to one side, the veterinarian shoved the bottle down his throat, dispensing as many glug-glugs as possible before the enraged animal went ballistic.

Veterinarians categorized post-dosed mules as one-lappers, two-lappers, and three-lappers. The weakest galloped once around the barn, bucking and braying, before dying; average mules, twice; survivors, thrice.

One of Jaybird’s worst experiences involved a mule named Tantalus. How he got that name is uncertain, but it is appropriate.

In Greek mythology, Tantalus was punished for offending the gods. Condemned to eternal damnation in Hades, cool water and juicy grapes — both just barely out of reach — tormented him. Because Tantalus the mule was condemned on Hades-hot days to plowing one side of rows with unreachable ends and having to turn and plow the other side, the name was an ideal moniker.

Tantalus loathed two-legged creatures as much as he did his four-legged counterparts, but tolerated Jaybird. Mule and man worked well together, until colic afflicted Tantalus.

The veterinarian arrived with the sweet spirits of niter, and asked Jaybird to assist him. Not wanting to inflict pain upon his mule friend with a nose twister, Jaybird used a halter.

In the loft beside the veterinarian, he gently pulled on the halter rope, coaxing Tantalus into the drenching position while pulling his tongue sideways. The process was going well until the vet shoved the bottle down his throat and the evil elixir entered his innards. Instantly, the giant beast bolted from the stall.

Jerked out of the loft, Jaybird landed astraddle the mule, and off the two flew. Just as he was preparing to eject himself from Tantalus, the galloping patient vomited into the slipstream, and a disgusting dollop of the regurgitated remedy spattered squarely in Jaybird’s mouth, thereby administering him a drenching.

While alternately gagging and dousing his head in the water trough, he heard the doctor say, “Tantalus is cured, Jaybird, but the prognosis for you isn’t certain. If you were a mule, I’d say you’re just a one-lapper.”


 Jimmy Reed

Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber