“Desperate Dilemma: Can a Town Save Their Stubborn Mule Trapped in the Barn Before It’s Too Late?”
“Well, color me downright stumped,” said Verne Colton, rubbing his pushin’ shoulder after trying and failing to free his mule from where she was stuck and not rile her up too much. “I pushed something fierce, but I ain’t get Cloppy out the hole over there in the door.”
“As God is my witness, I will free that mule,” Colton added, “if it’s nearabout the last thing I do.”
According to sources who’d come by to see what all the fuss was about, the town tried just about everything to free that sturdy mule: first slathering her in pig grease and then roping her hindquarters to a wagon as the town’s most able-bodied menfolk—Bill, other Bill, Big Pete, and the Baker brothers—all tugged on the doorframe and gave her a whack on her meaty rear.
However, local experts reckoned that the dang mule remained stuck as all get-out—really fuming and madder than heck now, too.
“I thought I could use a paddle to jab her out, but I got kicked in the mug again,” Jarvis Baker said after trying for the fourth time to pry the mule out from the barn door with a broken canoe oar. “Lord willin’, this next time’ll do it, though.”
Several reports indicated this was the worst case of livestock being stuck in these parts since a July 1991 incident out by the Abernathy place, where a blue-ribbon prize hog called Petunia plugged up the drinking well while she was fixing to quench her thirst. Townsfolk reckoned that Petunia pitched a hissy fit, thrashing her trotters in the air and squealing up a storm before locals used all manner of broomsticks and shovel handles to knock the pig to the bottom of the well. Residents claimed the water still has a tang of pork.
