Cattle out in the pasture do the same thing if they go a couple of days in the sun before you find them.....they'll be all ballooned up and swollen to the point their legs will stick out straight and splayed apart. We used to just get back about 100 yards and bust them with a 30-30 round.
Every spring I used to work cattle for one of grandfather's rancher neighbors. He had some sizable spreads outside of Cheyenne that bordered the continental divide (Rockies). One spring we were moving about 600 head from the lower (winter) pastures to some higher (spring / summer) pastures. Some magazine wanted to do a spread on his drive and sent a writer and photographer. Sure enough we came upon a steer that had died and was swollen almost to the point of no return. Told the writer and photographer not to get too close to the swollen carcass. Something distracted me and the next thing I know this writer is right up next to this carcass getting his picture taken by his phtographer. Before I could get the words out of mouth, he patted this swollen carcass bell with his hand. The photographer snapped the picture just as this thing exploded. It knocked the writer about 30 feet away and covered him with all the putrid entrails. I mean he was soaked from head to toe. W're thirty miles from the nearest shower and the only thing at hand was a stock tank with ice cold water in it. Luckily one of the ranch hands had a pair of cold weather coveralls in his pack and lent them to the writer. I hadn't thought of that in years. Still get a belly ache laughing at the though and the vision of all that stuff showering him like a title wave........
__________________ Steve and Lisa
Un-tethered buoys in the shipping lanes of life.