Rabbits, Beef, and...

I slept terribly last night. Not sure why. Seems that out at the house here, I wake up at about 2 am and can’t get back to sleep or I’m completely exhausted from the previous night and sleep like a rock. Go figure.

Anyhow, the drilling crew on one of the rigs is switching tomorrow. Cory’s team is leaving, and Gorge’s (pronounced whore-gay) team is coming on. I worked previously with Gorge, and his deck hands, and they are good people.

Cory did tell me something funny this morning though.

Gorge likes to cook, something that he himself told me a few weeks ago. I can appreciate that, because I kinda like cooking too.

When I last worked with Gorge, I came in one of the first mornings I met him I (about 5:30 am), and he was cooking a 6 lb beef roast in an old metal 5 gallon bucket. He had cut the bottom of the bucket off, and placed an old propane space heater inside of the bucket. He then laid a piece of sheet metal over the bucket and cooked the roast over the heat.

So I said “that looks good”. To which Gorge said something like “eh, amigo, cooked in 5 hours!”.

Later that week they had made this potato/tomato/roast stir fry using the same space heater stove, and they gave me some. It was pretty good actually.

So…Today I was talking to Cory, and mentioned that I had some of the roast with gorge’s team a few weeks ago. He started laughing and said “you know where those Mexicans fuckin’ keep that roast right?”

Apparently Jasper (Has-pah), Gorge’s deck hand, stores all the food in the bottom of his clothing locker in the doghouse. No refrigeration, and next to his boots. So apparently he had this roast sitting in his locker, next to his dirty boots and grease-covered coveralls, sitting on a piece of sheet metal for 1 week and they gnawed away at it all week long. They’d pull it out at lunchtime, hack a chunk off, throw it over the space heater stove and serve it up with a tomato.

…On a side note, Justin has stopped trying to shoot rabbits with his pellet gun, and moved on to shooting mice. This morning there was a nasty stack of mice (probably about 10 mice) sitting on the kelly deck outside the doghouse. Good job Justin!

It must’ve been tough for him to resist shooting rabbits. There are a TON a rabbits here. Early in the morning when you drive to the site, there’s groups of rabbits all over the place. Every so often, when you drive down to one of the rigs there will be 3-5 dead rabbits that have been run over by the drill crew during shift change. I’ve almost hit them a number of times out here.

Each night the rabbits are cleaned up by the coyote’s and/or the bald eagle that’s out here in this valley.