Lost tractor keys, need help before I get aggravated

The other morning, I got up early and started doing my chores.

I used to eat my breakfast first and then start feeding, but, over the winter, I’ve started doing about half the feeding then coming back in the house and eating breakfast, then I head out again to finish the morning chores. Breaking it into two sections let’s me warm up a little around midmorning.

It’s muddy as the dickens around our house. I hook my jeans on the top of my boots so the bottom of my pant leg stays dry and out of the mud.

I wade around from barn-to-barn and try to stay fairly clean, this way, when I go back in to eat breakfast, I don’t track mud all over the house and wifey doesn’t gripe.

I start my tractor each morning and let it warm up a little while when I go inside to eat breakfast. This is really where this story starts.

I didn’t want to crawl all the way up into the cab to start it, mostly because I was cold and it was spitting snow. So, with my insulated leather gloves on, I stuck my hand down in my coat pocket and pulled out the tractor key.

It’s on a small key ring with one other key. The top half of both keys are black and neither key is very big. The tractor was kind of parked in a dark spot behind the barn and, when I pulled those keys out of my pocket with my gloves on, I dropped them in a mud puddle made from the ruts of the tractor. I could have sworn I heard those keys splash when they hit the water.

I got down and felt around in the mud puddle with my gloves on and couldn’t find them. So, I went and got a magnet on little wheels to try to get the keys to stick to the magnet. I still couldn’t find them using the magnet.

I tried with my glasses on and with them off. Nothing seemed to help because those keys had disappeared.

I began to look kind of harshly at my son’s new Labrador retriever puppy. He’s been bad about carrying off anything that’s not tied down.

It all happened fairly quick and I didn’t think that dog really had time to fish around in that mud puddle and get the keys. I was aggravated and mystified as to just where those durned keys went.

Finally, I went in the house to look for another set of keys and start my breakfast. I even texted my wife and said, “Lost tractor keys need help.” She sent back one of those emoji things of a woman with her arms up like I can’t help you.

So, I looked for another set of keys and I was fairly sure I didn’t have another set.

Finally, I found a key that might just work in the tractor.

When I stuck my foot in the boot I felt something poking me. Low and behold, there were the tractor keys I had searched more than 2 hours for.

I guess when I dropped them, they fell in the top of my boot and I didn’t know it. I texted my wife and said, “all good they were in my boot.”

For whatever reason, the rest of the morning I was kind of aggravated. I wondered what the odds are of another farmer dropping the only set of tractor keys in his boot and not realizing it.

When my wife got home that evening, she told me her and the other teachers at school had a good laugh about me losing the keys. They even sent home a small string to tie them on my belt with!

That didn’t help my aggravated state, either.

EDITOR’S NOTE: James Lockhart lives near the Kiamichi Mountains in southeast Oklahoma. He writes cowboy stories and fools with cows and horses.