Mr. Doolan’s Team.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLII, Issue 7, 17 February 1909, Page 65

Mr. Doolan’s Team.

(By

MAX ADELER.)

Keyser has on his farm, as a hand, an Irishman named Pat Doolan. One of Mr. Doolan’s duties is to take care of a team, of mules. They are very eccentric mules, and. some of his. experiences with them have been peculiar. One day last winter the near mule, by one of those extraordinary accidents which never happen to any four-legged animal but a mule, managed, while rubbing his hind quarters against a board fence, to get his tail through a hole in one of the boards. Keyser’s boy saw it there, and, seizing a tough stick, he tied the tail of the mule firmly to it; ;tnd when the mule found that he could not get away, he stood there as calmly as if Tie never expected anything else. After a while Mr. Doolan called the mule several times without producing any motion from the animal. Thereupon, in a furious rage, he rushed at it with a dub, and. whacking it, said: “Won’t mind, won’t ye? Be the powers, I’ll knock the head off ye if ye don’t.” Then he hit the brute another blow, and the mule, making one convulsive effort, pulled down four panels of fence, and, starting at a trot, ran the fence against Mr. Doolan, knocked him down, scraped the fence over him, tore his clothes, and knocked the skin off him in half a dozen places. When he arose the mule was Hying around the barn-yard, with four boards and a post still hanging to its tail. Mr. Doolan looked at the animal a minute, and exclaimed: “Mother of Moses! but I’d give a thousand dollars to know how that baste iver fixed that stick bn his tail and crawled through that hole in the fence!” Mr. Doolan and his wife live on the farm in a little domain in the corner of a field. One night the mules were pasturing in the field, and in order to keep them from jumping the fence th z 'v were tied together by a rope of considerable length. Mr. Doolan’s house has no cellar, but is supported by bricks placed beneath the four corners. The mules during the night wandered one on one side of the cabin and one on the other, and as soon as the rope became taut both of them pulled. A second later the cabin slid off the bricks and came to the ground with a thump. Mr. and Mrs. Doolan awoke in great agitation, and Mr. Doolan said: “What the divil’s that ? Is it an earthquake, Biddy?” Then the mules gave another jerk, and Mr. Doolan said; “Begorra it is! D’ye feel that now? -Shakin’ like a ship in a gale!” Mr. Doolan ran for the door, intending to escape before the roof fell in, but the door opens outward and the rope was against it. Then he concluded that it. was not an earthquake, but robbers, and he went to the window to reconnoiter. The mules were on the blind side of the house, giving an occasional tug. Mr. Doolan looked out of the window in front and could see nothing; he gazed from the window on the left side and nothing was there; he peeped through the basement on the right side, and nothing appeared. Then he was scared, and he said: - “Biddy, acushla, but don't it bang Banaghar? I believe it’s the ould boy himself!” At that moment the mules united in a pull, and thev succeeded in turning the cabin completely upside down; the bedstead, the stove, and the crockery were piling upon the Doolans as thev lay against the ceiling, in a winner that was awful to behold. Half-wild with fright, they crept to the window and reached the open air. It was a moonlit night, and the mules were grazing close by. with the rope around the pump. Mr. Doolrtn understood the situation in a moment, and he expressed his opinion of those animals in the Ballvdhudeen dialect with such vigour and voeiferousness that he started all the roosters for miles round to crowing. Next morning he resigned ; but be reconsidered liis determination after Keyser fixed the cabin up again for him, and he is still chief engineer of that team. He ties the mules In the stable, now, at night, though.