Me too, Lupe

Ole Johnny Mudd had gotten up very early on that morning. He knew that since it hadn’t rained in many months, there was very little water from which the cows could drink in the ditches and ponds. Because of the arid land, all grass and alfalfa that usually sprung up at this time of the year, just withered away into nothing. Something just had to be done to help all the cowboys and ranchers feed their cattle before they all starved to death.

As he rode the entire length of his big range, Ole Johnny Mudd tried to figure out a way deal with the desperate situation. He sung a little melody as he rode along, trying to think of how to fix the problem.

He sang: “Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam, where the deer and the antelope play; where seldom it heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day. Home, home on the range, where the deer and the antelope play, where seldom is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day.”

His horse was trotting along merrily to the rhythm of his song. Suddenly a fancy cowboy sitting atop a dappled horse rode up to him. “Howdy do, sir?” he greeted Ole Johnny Mudd. “My name is Rusty Red. How’s it going for you on this fine morning” Since the cowboy had spoken to him in English, Ole Johnny Mudd knew that he was a gringo.

“I’m not doing at all well, Rusty,” Ole Johnny Mudd replied to him. “The land is so dry, there is nothing for my cattle to eat and nothing flows in the ditches but streams of dust. But it is so cold that the ice that forms on the plants is ‘dry ice’.”

“That’s because you are trying to take care of your farm animals the old-fashioned way. You sit around waiting for rain and snow to fall from the sky. That’s all well and good, my friend, but an easier way is to do what I do. Make the rain and snow come to you whenever you need it. You need to get on an airplane or on a helicopter and go seed the clouds first.” Ole Johnny Mudd had never heard of such modern methods of bringing down precipitation.

“I’ve never been on anything except for my dappled horse,” he said. I call him Dapple because he seems to have apple slices all

over his body. “I can’t even imagine what my land and my animals

might look like, watching them from above. And, by the way, what

kind of seeds do you plant in the clouds to make rain and snow come down? I think that I would plant ice cubes or hail and wait for the sun to melt them up there before they fall. Maybe I should just sprinkle the clouds with pepper to make them sneeze down the rain.”

“You have to get with the modern times, amigo,” Rusty Red replied with a smile, thinking of making the clouds sneeze down the rain with pepper. “It isn’t ice cubes, hail or even pepper that can cause precipitation. You have to seed the clouds with dry ice.”

“I’ve got ‘dry ice’ hanging from the plants compadre,” Johnny Mudd said to Rusty Red.

“Dry ice is composed of solidified carbon dioxide, amigo,” Rusty Red answered him. “It is a scientific invention.”

“Cardon dioxide is what happens when humans breathe in oxygen and then breathe it out,” Ole Johnny Mudd said, remembering his basic chemistry.

“You’re right about that, hombre,” Ole Rusty Red agreed. “Then plants take in that carbon dioxide and turn it back into oxygen.”

The following day, Ole Johnny Mudd met Ole Rusty Red out in a small airfield close to his range. Ole Johnny Mudd was rather nervous about climbing on board the small, two-seater airplane. He wasn’t at all sure he wanted to make rain fall from the sky that badly, by seeding the clouds with dry ice.