Cattle ranchers describe 'worst nightmare'
Ranchers saw the end of their world Monday.
Dead cattle mottled the landscape a day after winds whipped fire into a murderous frenzy across six Texas Panhandle counties.
"It's like Armageddon out here," McLean-area rancher Bill Bryant said.
"We hauled - I don't remember - 15 to 18 calves that were dead. They just get into a corner and the fire consumes them."
Worse than the dead were the dying.
Cattle without ears.
Tails amputated by fire.
Eyelids melted shut.
Ranchers had no choice but to put the burned cattle down.
"Imagine your worst nightmare, and it can't even come close to this," said Brad Overstreet, a hand on the Taylor Ranch.
Fire killed four horses in a pasture on the ranch six miles north of Alanreed.
"All the horses were dead when we found them," Overstreet said. "They didn't have a hair on them.
"It's the worst thing you've ever seen in your life."
A couple of years ago we had a large fire around here and I had a couple of neighbors that lost cattle in the fire. It's not a pretty sight to see cattle burned to death where they lay or to find them wandering around so burned they can barely move. It's horrific. I feel for these guys having to deal with this. It's horrible not only to lose your grass and fences and belongings to a fire, but losing a lot of your animals too. Having some idea of what it feels like I bet they want to follow their critters down the same road.
Remember these people in your prayers that are being affected by these fires. This is just as devastating as Hurricane Katrina with a lot less media coverage bringing peoples attention to it.
Horrible experiences lead us to wonder whether the person who experiences them might not be something horrible. Friedrich Nietzsche
