One of my favorite activities prior to the China pandemic was attending bit and spur shows but in the aftermath the number and quality of the shows has withered. Organizers have struggled with ways to attract more attendees and younger folks to the hobby.

One show had an appraising panel like Antiques Roadshow where a person could bring in grandpa’s old horse gear and have a panel of experts appraise it. Only one person offered up his ‘antique’ bit he’d bought at a previous show but the experts all agreed it was made in China. One show staged a revival of the gunfight at the OK Corral between members of the Cowboy Action Shooting Society but this idea went over like a crying baby at a wedding, only louder. At a seminar at one show a professor jabbered about building a horse barn using feng shui. Whatever that is. Half the crowd lapsed into a coma.

The most interesting activity happened one year in the aisles of a cowboy show only the “panel discussion” was’t listed in the program. The participants included my friend Chuck, a fabulous bit and spur maker in the vaquero tradition; a savvy bit and spur trader from Texas named Larry who argued convincingly that Texas cowboy gear was far superior; and a snowbird rancher from Wyoming who came to California to escape the winters. He represented the third style of bit and spur making: the plains style.

Their argument filled the barn to standing room only and I anticipated the arrival of a SWAT team when their little discussion turned into a full scale riot.

“You and your pretty gut hooks and cowboy bootjacks (spurs) wouldn’t last 30 minutes in Texas,” argued Larry. “If you wear your fancy vaquero rib wrenches with all their delicate silver work in the Texas brush country the horse your riding is gonna turn around and laugh its butt off at you.” He held up a pair of plain but well made spurs from Texas and said, “Now THIS is a real pair of irons.”

“You gotta be kidding,” said Chuck. “Your grappling irons look like they were made out of two old metal files.” Chuck took one spur from Larry and filed some metal off the edge of a nearby table. “As far as I’m concerned you ruined two perfectly good files.”

The rancher from Wyoming listened intently but said nary a word.

“And what are these two jinglebob thingies hanging from the shank?” asked Larry. “They’re as useless as pockets on the back of a shirt. They’re like putting a hat on a horse.”

“That just shows how little you Texans know about diggin irons and horses in general,” said Chuck. “Instead of just jabbing your shanks into a horse, all a vaquero has to do is shake his foot to communicate with the horse. Jinglebobs also help a horse to settle into an almost musical rhythm where a good horse and skilled rider are in perfect harmony. But I guess that’s two things you ain’t got in Texas: skilled horsemen and good horses.”

Finally, the Wyoming rancher woke from his nap. “Chuck, I’m sorry but I’m gonna have to agree with Larry. Those jinglebobs and downward sloping shanks can get you killed two ways. First, the jinglebobs can get caught in your rowels locking them up so they don’t turn and when you get them stuck in the mohair of your cinch you’re in for a wreck if the horse happens to fall over backwards or you got bucked off. That’s bad enough but those huge rowels and two chains you prunies got hanging from your spurs almost got me killed when I walked across my wife’s new $20,000 wood floor she was so proud of. The big rowels with downward sloping shanks put a big dimple in the floor with each step. And the chains scratched the floor so bad it looked like someone had disked the floor with a plow. It took me three weeks of sanding to erase the deep furrows they made. Sorry, Chuck, your spurs sure are pretty but they almost caused a divorce in my family.”

The bit and spur show did a land office business the next year as spectators waited anxiously for round two of the big fight but by then two of the participants were deader than the market for counterfeit Chinese spurs.

WARNING! Do not read this column if you are about to eat or have just eaten. It may cause headache, diarrhea, constipation, cramping, bloating and nausea.

Professors at Wonkwang University in South Korea are testing ways to replace beef with meat made from mealworms. Baked or fried mealworms are now eaten in a few countries as snacks, although I don’t think we’ll be seeing Mealworm Doritos® at the next Super Bowl party nor can I see people picking through the peanuts for mealworms as if they were cashews in the Planter’s® Party Mix.

This story raises several troubling questions. First, if you were a doctor would you hang your diploma on the wall if you graduated from a place called Wonkwang University? And what the heck is a mealworm anyway?

I’m glad you asked. A mealworm is the larval stage of the yellow mealworm beetle. They do have a brain and mealworms were the first organisms to circle the moon back in 1968 which has been described as “one small step for mealworms.” They are successfully being raised in labs and also in people’s unkempt houses. (They are said to love Cheerios®, but then, who doesn’t?)

One problem the scientists ran into is that inbreeding such as occurs in a lab really hurts the female’s sex appeal and is a real turn-off to male mealworms. They are commonly used to feed reptiles, fish, birds and are also used for fish bait. So in this brave new world of the future are we now going to be reduced to eating fish bait? Really? If you want to eat a few I recommend you look up Bassett’s Cricket Ranch where you can get 1,000 mealworms for only $15.99. Bassett’s got high marks for their mealworms although one online critic described them as “putrid, smelly and terrible,” and another said, “If you’re easily grossed out they may not be for you.”

Mealworms are nocturnal and gregarious creatures that are mostly vegetarian but do occasionally go off their diet and eat each other. The cannibals also feed on dead or dying birds and can pass along salmonella, e coli and numerous other diseases that could threaten your life if you eat too many. If ranchers have the stomach for it they can get a good look at their competition on the Internet. To me mealworms look like a bunch of disgusting maggots at an orgy, crawling all over each other.

One thing mealworms can do that cows haven’t shown an aptitude for yet is they can eat plastic. That’s right, they can digest polystyrene which is a thermoplastic substance and get this, mealworms taste exactly the same whether they’ve been fed Cheerios® or a diet of plastic.

To feed the ever-growing mass of humanity on earth it’s been suggested that cattle ranchers could easily transition into mealworm ranchers and admittedly, I can see some advantages. You wouldn’t have to be constantly worried about a drouth, mealworms require little in the way of fencing, they have few, if any, difficult births and even if they are hard calvers who cares? After all, the lady mealworm can give birth to over 500 offspring during her short life, which is more than you can say about your average cow. And if you threw a bunch of empty plastic bottles off the feed truck instead of expensive hay I’m pretty sure the cows wouldn’t eat it.

I have doubts about this entire mealworm-as-human-food concept though and can’t see ranchers selling their cows and buying mealworms. First of all, I doubt the mealworms would survive the branding. Instead of cowboy poets descending every year on Elko I doubt we’ll hear from mealworm poets, after all, what rhymes with mealworms? I wonder, will there be a mealworm checkoff and will the Cowboy Hall of Fame be expanded to include the lowly mealworm?

South Korean scientists know Americans would never willingly eat mealworms so they suggest a sneaky approach in which the worms could be hidden in savory seasonings “as a way to change consumer’s minds.” They suggest using mealworms as condiments in the same way we use salt and pepper. Can’t you just imagine someone at a dinner party saying, “Please pass the salt and the mealworms.” Or, a chef tasting his latest creation and saying, “Um, I think it needs a pinch more worms.”