Who Wears Short Shorts?

surreptitious picture of the shorts

“Real men wear shorts to work”--direct quote from one of my co-workers at Kurundi Station, another cattle station job. It’s true that some of the guys here work in shorts. I just don’t understand why they have to wear shorty shorts--think along the lines of 1980s men’s basketball shorts.

For station work, they’re around cattle all day long. It’s mustering season, so they muster (bring cattle into the yards), draft (sort by sex and/or age), and brand. The branding process involves de-horning, castration, ear-marking, and hormone tags for the steers in addition to the actual branding.

When cattle are de-horned, they spurt blood from the head. Castration and branding sometimes causes them to shit themselves. So these guys come back covered in…you guessed it…blood and poo, not on their jeans, but on their legs. I can’t imagine it’s fun to clean out of leg hairs.

wearing shorts to feed Lucille

But who am I to judge? I wore shorts when feeding the poddy (orphaned) calves at my last station job, and I would inevitably end up with milk, poo, and sometimes blood  (don’t ask, sometimes blood happens caring for calves) on my legs. Manure in the boots was the worst. I’m just glad I didn’t have the leg hair-cleaning problem. And I could immediately clean and not have to wear it all day.