I was not at all happy finding myself on an early morning sixty-five mile drive from Vale to the Boise airport. I was responding to yesterday afternoon’s telephone call from a rancher near Bakersfield, California. I recognized his name, but had never met him. He told me I was recommended by his friend, naming him as one who I knew to be the national Director of the Bureau of Land Management. I had been impressed, and was now castigating myself for letting myself to be gulled, if the representation was untrue, or worse, flattered, if true.
I had asked him why he called and he said he was expecting a lot of trouble in his public land grazing use and he needed me. I asked him what week would be convenient for him and he said, “Tomorrow” because of “what was then going on.” He sounded like he was in big trouble and I told him I would call right back. I rearranged my calendar, made flight reservations, and called him to say I would be at the Bakersfield airport by noon. He said he would be waiting for me in front of the airport in a gray pickup. When I arrived, it was hot, and he was there.
I climbed in. He pulled out and headed for the country. He was a gruff old guy; when I asked him to tell me his problem, he simply said that I would be finding out for myself. He kept silent, bent over the steering wheel intent on his driving, and I settled back to see the landscape.
In an hour or so as we were driving though open range I saw in the distance some small white tents, like the tents of the Boy Scout Troop I was used to seeing as a Scout Master. He continued to say nothing, and as we pulled up to the neatly arranged enclave, an attractive group of girls came out to meet the pickup.
One asked me whether we had come to arrest them. I probably looked as surprised as I was! I asked them why they were expecting that.
The apparent leader said that they were students in an Environmental Studies Program at Berkeley, had become interested in Kit Foxes and the Flying Squirrel, and their professor had suggested that they go into the field. She said they had captured some Foxes far away and transplanted them here where they were trying to acclimate them to a new habitat.
Shocked again, I asked them whether they were aware that the transplanting was unlawful. The leader said their teacher had not told them, but “Mr. Gruff” did. With a smile she added that the little critters were there, nevertheless, and were ever so much happier.
Mr. Gruff was not pleased and asked them profanely whether they understood that this new habitat could very well jeopardize his right to continue using his grazing allotment. Another smile. “I guess that’s how the Endangered Specie Act works,” she said.
Mr. Gruff, obviously very angry, pulled out, leaving a cloud of dust. An hour or so later we were back in Bakersfield and walked into the Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management.
A small world. As we went in, I was recognized by one whom I had known as a Range Conservationist in another District. Seeing who I was with, he took us to the Manager’s office and introduced me, saying some nice things about me. Mr. Gruff obviously needed no introduction.
The Manager was very cordial, asking Mr. Gruff and me to sit down, and immediately said that he assumed that Mr. Gruff had told me a cockamamy story about college girls and Kit Foxes. Before my repeating Mr. Gruff’s story, he wanted to tell me he had scheduled a half day for an investigation within a week or so. In the meantime, if I insisted, he would follow us out there that very afternoon. We would be followed, he said, by folks from the local television station who would have received a routine notification. And if he found the story of Mr. Gruff to be accurate, he would do what he could to arrest the girls and issue a citation, with the whole episode being recorded for the evening news; and would be repeated in the local news, probably the regional news, and perhaps the national news. All of which almost certainly would provide the venue for the girls to deplore livestock grazing the public land at the cost of jeopardizing endangered species- of course, with the complicity of the federal agency.
On the other hand if he conducted his investigation as scheduled, he would expect to suffer temperatures that were forecast to rise and exceed 125 degrees continuously by then. He said that he suspected he would then be unable to find any college girls or Kit Foxes, and that the story of Mr. Gruff was what he now believed it to be, just a story. So, he said, the choice was mine. I told the Manager that I would speak further to Mr. Gruff and if we were to go out that afternoon, I would return immediately and the caravan could proceed.
Leaving his office, I told Mr. Gruff that I was about to give him the best and least expensive advice he would ever receive. That is, cut short my hourly rate, and immediately take me to the airport to reserve the next flight to Boise.
It was the following morning, and when Mr. Gruff picked me up at the motel to take me to the airport, he brought with him a large box of frozen New York and T-Bone steaks which he gave me with the most profound thanks I think I ever received from a client – for doing nothing.
I felt better during the trip back home.
