RANBURNE, AL—Concluding an hours-long summit with top thinkers from the area, residents of a town with a heavyset mule stuck halfway through a barn door declared Thursday that they’re plumb out of ideas.
The townsfolk, who were spotted scratching their chins and shaking their heads, had reportedly convened around the rear end of a stout mule after hearing neighbor Verne Colton cussing up a storm while pushing with all his might on the hindquarters of his 2,000-pound animal, Cloppy, in order to free her from the dang barn door.
“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.
Just before sundown, the town mayor arrived on the scene with an even wider mule, Jumbo, who was brought to the farm to push Cloppy through the doorway. Unfortunately, insiders confirmed, the mule had taken an immediate liking to Cloppy and had gone and gotten his self stuck too.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” said Mayor Virgil Hart, dabbing mule spit from his brow with his necktie. “I ain’t never seen a mule that stuck—let alone two—and we used up all my good slidin’ grease on the first one.”
“Not to mention, it’s hotter than blazes out here and the whole town stinks to high heaven of mule and rancid lard,” he added.
At that point, sources reported, the mayor issued a mandate to bring in an even fatter mule that could nudge Cloppy and Jumbo out from behind.
“Oh, dang it, there goes one of them sheep that wandered in to see what all the fuss is about,” Hart said. “Now all three are stuck in there tighter’n a banjo string.”
Not knowing what else to do, head-scratching sources then called in the town sheriff to shoot at the mules and the sheep, hoping to scare them through the threshold, but such efforts were to no avail.
“Hoo doggy, did that make the old gal ornery!” said Sheriff Davis Paine, using a kerchief to wipe the mule blood off his hands and face. “She was sure fumin’ somethin’ awful. And everyone ’round here knows the only thing worse’n one stuck heavyset mule is two angry stuck mules and a sheep that’s all of ’em covered in grease.”
“How’d a coupla mules get so big anyhow?” Paine continued. “That’s 10 pounds of mule in a 5-pound sack.
Jesus Christ is King
