I am driving into Albuquerque, approximately 9AM, enjoying the red-dirt-colored skyline in what more often than not strikes me as a downright stark (and if the sun is just right--occasionally pretty) high desert town. A big red pickup hauls past me on the right. It's business as usual. Cowboy in a Cowboy Hat Driving a Chevy with Country and Western Blaring on the Radio.

(If you're a big city person, this is nothing like those rapper fools whose music penetrates you to your DNA level, and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it, because he thinks that everyone else in the world wants to listen to the noise he's listening to. No. I'm not talking about that.)

What gets my attention is strapped to the back of the flat bed trailer that cowboy's towing through the post-rush-hour traffic. It's a longhorn. As in cow. And it's dead as a doornail.

Thankfully.

I guess ... ?

I can't take my eyes off the darned thing it's so awful. My eyes dart--

Traffic. Cow. Traffic. Cow. Traffic. Cow.

I'm noticing that the other drivers are seeming to have the same problem too. The speckled longhorn is at least two of my percheron horse Toby, and he's huge. I get that unpleasant picture out of my mind. Fast. I can't see a bullet mark on that cow. She's as neat as a pin. Eyes closed peacefully like she's really just taking a nap. Although her hooves are undeniably sticking up in the air. Poor thing.

I wind up tailing this cowboy and his deceased longhorn down I-40 towards the Sandia Mountains. I have ample time to observe that the only thing holding her onto the flatbed as it bounces down the asphalt is a set of ratchet straps ratcheted right around those impressive horns. Horns that nearly span the width of the flatbed trailer. Now there's a bad end, I'm thinking. I do have a soft spot for these critters, which is why Dennis won't ever in this lifetime let me and the kids have a 4-H steer, because he says he'll wind up feeding it for the next twenty years while I teach it circus tricks or some such nonsense.

As I'm about to make my exit, I'm really relieved that I'll be leaving this ignoble sight behind me. I reach to tune into the local AM radio and then all of a sudden I'm cursing under my breathe, seriously cursing, mind you, as the cowboy Charon ferries his gigantic dead beast right across the lane in front of me. I can see her pink udders waving in the wind. Couldn't he have covered her up or something? Where is his sense of decorum?

I follow him all the way down San Mateo Avenue, feeling worse and worse for that longhorn with every passing city block. I half expect the cowboy to turn his rig into the Livestock Board Offices, which are on our left, but he doesn't. At a stoplight, I fight the nearly overwhelming temptation to roll down the window of my SUV and ask --

So what happened?

And where are you going with a longhorn ratcheted to the back of your flatbed trailer? A barbecue?

Hey, cowboy, I feel I have a right to ask. After being stuck behind you and your dead longhorn for something like a good half an hour while I'm trying to get to a meeting.

It's right there on the tip of my tongue. Then I consider the idea that the recently departed longhorn might stink if I do roll down my window. Might stink real bad, actually. I think about the boy I knew over twenty years ago who was the keeper of the Texas A&M longhorn mascot. He loved that longhorn. Loved to drink beer and tell stories about the spotted fellow. Even showed me a photo of him and the big boy on the football field once. That longhorn's horns were as wide as goal posts. I keep my hand off the window button and mind my manners.

My kids' friend's dad is a taxidermist. I consider that as the light turns from yellow to red. Maybe the cowboy is decorating one of those high-end Santa Fe haciendas and they're going for the "working ranch look" in their living room, complete with glass-eyed longhorn. Or better yet--their foyer.

I was in a super duper upscale house in Santa Fe once whose Hollywood owners had larger-than-life Kachinas decorating standing sentry in their entryway. Imagine 7-foot hairy wolves with gnashing pointed wooden teeth, if you will. Not to mention recessed and theatrical lighting straight out of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Kind of had me wondering if there would be blood sacrifices after the tiramisu and coffee. (The floors were glossy red ochre. The walls covered in lightning bolts. This mess made it into a very expensive coffee table book of Southwestern architecture eventually.)

I've seen worse than stuffed longhorns.