Fire at the Ranchland

I call it the Ranchland but it isn't. It's only a little over 2 acres in the country. I call it Ranchland because it's on Ranchland Road. That's all. So anyway, times are dry in Oklahoma. There have been fires around, as there often are, and some of the cowboys in the neighborhood are worried they'll have to sell the cows too early. You can't keep 'em if you have no more water. This happens sometimes. And this is Oklahoma after all. It could rain enough to make us forget all about in one weekend. But for now it's dry. This time of year I crank up the garden tractor and try to mow down all the leaves that gather at the fences. They're fun for the dogs to play in over the winter because they get very deep. Deeper than the dogs. But I need to get them out of there before the snakes wake up. A pile of dried leaves is the perfect hangout place for copperheads. Some neighbors just drop a match into them and they'll burn down along the fence line but when you do that you have to paint the fence more often than I want. So I mow. I was out there doing that and, as usual, the leaves would pile up in front of me. I'd have to stop and shove them aside. Use the rake to pull them away from the fence and use my hands to pull them out of the deck area where they clog up and slow things down. It's like plowing snow only much more dusty. While I was mowing around the back of the house over next to the split rail fence, I noticed some sparks around the area of my knees. I looked down on my right side and saw a little bit of fire. Shoot, fire. Watch out. Can't ignore fire. So I quickly stopped and jammed it into reverse in order to shake loose the leaves that were clogging up the deck area. As I did so I left a trail of fire. I looked down then and saw that the whole damned tractor was on fire around the engine and deck area. I jumped off and started kicking at the fire. Looking around I noticed that, not only was the machine on fire but I had been trailing little bitty fires all down the fence line. The whole damnit place was starting to grow hot and heavy with little piles dead leaf fires all over. I stomped and kicked and slapped the mower, melting half my expensive running shoe, then ran around looking stupid stomping on fires everywhere. When I did so they would splash like water only with flames and start other fires all around. After a few short minutes that seemed like all afternoon the fires were out. I noticed that a fat wire with a big rubber encased area had melted. I traced it down and realized that it was only the headlight wire. The machine wouldn't start but it didn't take long to figure out that a fuse had blown. I replaced the fuse and now I'm back in business. My shoe doesn't look so good anymore but the lawn mower is very happy. Now when I mow I carry a spray bottle with water. It's sometimes a hard life at the Ranchland.