pasture leisure

The calf returned to its original position, and Zhang Chi also took control of the reins, waiting for the herd to maintain a suitable position with the herd, so as to better observe the movements of the restless elements in the herd.

"Have a bite?"

Charles came to Zhang Chi's side and shook the flagon in his hand at Zhang Chi.

Zhang Chi waved his hand: "Thank you, no need."

Charles took back the flagon, unscrewed the lid and took out a crumpled disposable plastic cup from his pocket, poured a little wine from the flagon, and drank it all at once.

what!
Charles breathed a sigh of relief, and then said to Zhang Chi: "If you don't have a sip of wine in such a cold day, you won't be able to warm up your body."

Zhang Chi laughed and said, "I'm hot enough now."

In the process of driving the cattle, the man and the horse hardly stopped for a moment. Now the heat on Zhang Chi's body just offset the cold air. It is not comfortable to say, but it is not cold.

Charles looked at Zhang Chi and said, "There are not many young people like you now."

Zhang Chi joked, "Really? But people who have met me say so."

"Haha!" Charles laughed loudly: "It's even more rare to be humorous."

In recent years, Charles has seen many young people as old as Zhang Chi, but these young people did not give him a good impression. Charles felt that the new generation in the United States was lazy and hypocritical, unwilling to do work, and had a lot of opinions. Still can't work steadily, and still want to live a good life like this, there are pitfalls in this fucking mind.

Not to mention anything else, let’s just talk about the current profession of cowboys. Few young people are involved in it. One is that they don’t make much money, and the other is that the work is tiring. They would rather take a paper cup to the street than work.

It's not like when they were young, they were willing to do any kind of hard work, and believed that as long as they worked hard, good days would surely come.

After these two days of observation, Charles felt that Zhang Chi, a young man, was neither afraid of hardship nor tired. It was obvious that his legs were worn out, but he still didn't complain, and he still refused to do less.

This reminded him of how he worked so hard when he was young. From a cowboy to a farmer, luck seemed to never leave his diligent self, allowing him to drill an oil well on the farm.

"Haha" Zhang Chi also laughed.

"Is your leg all right?" Charles asked.

Zhang Chi said with a smile: "It's okay, a little injury."

For Zhang Chi, this is really a trivial matter. When he came out to make a living, his uncle's experience told him that people like himself who do not have rich parents and are unwilling to work hard will not have a good life.

"Want to learn eagle training?"

Suddenly, Charles threw the question.

Zhang Chi was stunned when he heard this, and thought to himself: Why did the old man suddenly bring up this matter.

But Zhang Chi was really moved. How can a man not like these raptors, so Zhang Chi nodded: "I think it's very interesting."

Charles said: "In fact, training eagles is quite simple. I started training them from young eagles, which were just a little bit bigger. I bought the young eaglets that were just hatched and fed them myself."

As he said that, Charles looked at the eagle standing on the scaffold in front of his saddle. At this moment, the eagle's head had been buckled with a leather hood, and there were a few leather tassels on the top of the hood. It was as quiet as a squatting bird. Quiet as a chicken on a tree branch.

Charles continued: "This is my sixth eagle. The previous ones have changed hands. I have raised golden eagles, falcons, gray eagles, and even vultures. This Hass eagle is The best I've ever had."

"Have you raised so many species?" Zhang Chi asked curiously.

Charles said: "There are many varieties. Some people like big eagles, such as golden eagles, while others like small ones, such as peregrine falcons. I raised a golden eagle with a wingspan of [-] meters. I'm too tired, my arms can't bear it when I'm old."

Hearing this Zhang Chi smiled.

Then Charles and Zhang Chi talked a lot about the eagle breed.

Now Zhang Chi feels that his knowledge reserve is wider. He really doesn’t know that there are many kinds of eagles. He used to know the two or three types of eagles, eagles and falcons. Buzzard this thing.

A lot of names made Zhang Chi's head dizzy for a while.

"If you want to try it, I recommend this breed, it's a good learner and easy to train," said Charles.

Zhang Chi said: "I'm just curious, and I haven't made up my mind to train eagles yet."

Charles shrugged his shoulders indifferently, and said to Zhang Chi: "Life is short in this life, and there are many things to try, otherwise it is not a waste of life, young people just have to keep trying New things, find some small hobbies. I heard that your cattle are very good, and it seems that you are not too short of money. Trust me, do everything you want to do while you are young, because you don’t know when bad luck will come. will fall on your head."

Zhang Chi nodded, thinking: This old man still thinks a lot.

Many people Zhang Chi has met now don’t actually know what they want to do. What they see is three meals a day. They don’t have any ideals. Even if they have ambitions, they are smoothed out by life.

But Charles feels differently to him. The old man enjoys life. Even if it is such a hard job as driving cattle, he can find time to feed eagle minks or something. No matter how tired he is, there will always be a smile on his face. Enjoy life every moment.

At this time, a calf left the team, Charles urged the horse to drive over, drove the calf back to the team, and turned to Zhang Chi's side.

"If you have to die, pay attention to me." Charles said to Zhang Chi: "We can contact on the Internet in the future."

Zhang Chi has social media in the United States, but he seldom uses them, because Zhang Chi hardly ever went to school in the United States, so he has no American friends who grew up, unlike his second brother Zhang Wu, men and women a lot.

After paying attention to Charles, the old and the young continued to chat about the eagle.

After chatting like this, Zhang Chi discovered that the old man really has a lot of hobbies, such as skiing, surfing, paragliding, etc., the old man plays all of them.

Just like an old playboy.

The conversation with Charles was so lively, and the time seemed to pass faster.

In the evening, it was close to tonight's camp.

Zhang Chi and Charles had a lively chat.

At this time, a snow rabbit jumped out of a clearing next to the mountain. This thing is really fat. When it saw a group of cows and cowboys, it didn't run away, but stood on the snow. looking this way.

Zhang Chi saw it, and Charles naturally saw it too.

I saw Charles took off the upper cover of the eagle's head, put the eagle on his arm, and lifted it up slightly.

The moment the eagle took off the cover, it found the snow rabbit twenty or thirty meters away.

The moment Charles raised his arm, he spread his wings and flew towards the snow rabbit.

Zhang Chi was waiting to see the eagle catch the rabbit, who knew that the snow rabbit ran quickly when the eagle rushed over.

The rabbit ran on the snow, the eagle chased in the air, and swooped towards the rabbit like a sharp arrow.

Just when Zhang Chi thought he was ready to catch it, and when the eagle's claws were about to grab the rabbit's back, the rabbit suddenly turned sharply at ninety degrees, and then the eagle rushed into the snowdrift, and a standard dog came gnawing shit.

Immediately afterwards, the rabbit got rid of the eagle so easily, and disappeared after a few jumps.

Zhang Chi opened his mouth slightly now, feeling that he was lonely after waiting for a long time. Is it so hard for an eagle to catch a rabbit?

The eagle stuck in the snow was a little confused, shook the snow on its body, spread its wings and called twice, then flapped its wings and flew towards Charles.

It fell back into Charles' arms and was then lowered back onto the scaffolding in front of the saddle.

"Bad luck," Charles said.

Zhang Chi nodded, but said in his heart: You are too useless as an eagle.

At this time, Charles explained to Zhang Chi, and Zhang Chi realized that the success rate of eagle catching rabbits is not as high as he thought. In fact, most of the time it ends in failure. For rabbits, that's because all the ones released were successful, and the ones that failed were cut off.

This point subverts Zhang Chi’s cognition a bit. He thought that hawk catching a rabbit is as easy as pinching a soybean with three fingers. Only then did he realize that it is not the case. The success rate of hawk hunting is actually not as high as he imagined.

Charles withdrew the hawk, but there were two small dots in the sky. The two hawks kept circling at low altitude, screaming, and the sound was so sharp that it hurt the eardrums.

The hawk raised by Charles hunted, making the hawk couple in the sky think that their territory was invaded by other hawks, so they always wanted to find a chance to fight the intruders.

Apparently, the eagle couple's ideas came to nothing. No matter how they cried in the sky, the eagle standing on the saddle remained unmoved.

When the sun went down, everyone arrived at the last camp on time. Tomorrow night, everyone will arrive at Nell's ranch, and this transition will officially end.

Everyone gathered the cattle and started to work. Even Zhang Chi was considered a veteran, so the bonfire was soon lit up. Those who should cook cook, and those who should collect firewood gather firewood.

Charles released his mink at this time, and let the two little ones walk around in the camp. After eating, the two little guys had a little energy and kept fighting, which made the camp more crowded. Kind of angry.

Dinner is still roast beef, vegetable soup and fried eggs and bacon or something.

After filling his stomach, Zhang Chi sat by the fire and fed the mink with shredded meat. He didn't dare to feed the eagle, because he saw that Charles was wearing a special leather glove when feeding the eagle, and he stretched out his hand. If you are not careful, you will see the bones.It's safer to feed ferrets.

The next step is to sleep, and the next day, after breakfast, continue to drive cattle.

At noon, there was still a small Chinese-style hot pot. In the evening, the cattle drove into Nell's pasture, and Zhang Chi's first trip to the field was officially over.