COLUMN: Crash landing at mutton busting

Standing outside the wind-swept rodeo arena at the Flathead County Fairgrounds on Thursday night, a joke kept popping into my head.

It was Ian Stark, the cheeky Scotsman who designs the cross-country course at Rebecca Farm, who told it about a month ago.

“I always thought that if an alien landed and saw us doing dressage,” he said. “They would go back to where they came from.”

Dressage-bashing aside, it got me thinking.

If aliens turned their ships around at the sight of an elegantly dressed, fully-grown human prancing on a horse, what on earth would they do when they saw this?

In front of me is a six-year-old child dressed, come to think of it, kind of like an alien. He wears a hockey helmet with a full-cage face guard and an ill-fitting padded vest around his upper torso. He is sitting on top of a sheep. The sheep is not amused. The mutton, as they say, is raring to do its own kind of busting.

For most, the ride doesn’t last more than a second. Their tiny bodies slip quickly off the irritated sheep’s back and onto the dirt, although usually not gracefully. They fall awkwardly, flailing for any bit of animal to hold on to.

The sheep, sometimes, stands and looks back. He is triumphant, or puzzled, or both.

The aliens turn to each other. They are not triumphant. They are certainly puzzled.

Some young riders do get more than a second of glory. Bigfork 6-year-old Alexander Vigil wraps his legs around the sheep’s midsection, then his arms around the neck and desperately hangs on. He survives long enough to register the highest score so far and heads out of the ring, beaming.

A couple minutes later he’s still glowing, despite the violent few seconds.

“It hurt when I hit the ground really hard,” he said with a smile before adding, with as much enthusiasm as any 6-year-old can muster, “I was, like, tackling the sheep!”

The aliens retreat, hurriedly, to their flying saucer.

Vigil’s father, Dan, entered him in a lottery last year at the rodeo and Alexander’s name was drawn to give mutton busting a try this year. Dan is not a cowboy, nor is his son, so their event preparation was a little unorthodox.

“Nothing more than wrestling him in the living room,” Dan said.

“He really wanted to do this,” he added.

Lights blink and engines whirl on the grounded spaceship.

The winds keep whipping and the skies keep darkening while kids keep riding. They are loaded onto their sheep and sent off into the arena. The announcer bellows their names. The crowd cheers and laughs.

“What a world,” the aliens mutter.

Alexander did not retain his lead after the first day of competition. The tiny cowboy, though, was undeterred.

“I can’t wait to do it next year,” he said. “I wasn’t even nervous.”

The saucer door closes. The ship disappears. The aliens flee before the real show can even begin.

At least they missed the dressage.

Andy Viano is a sports reporter and columnist at The Daily Inter Lake who has never busted a mutton. He can be reached at aviano@dailyinterlake.com or 758-4446.