For those of you who have never traveled to the West or Southwest, cattle guards are horizontal steel rails placed at fence openings, in dug-out places in the roads adjacent to highways (sometimes across highways), to prevent cattle from crossing over that area. For some reason the cattle will not step on the "guards," probably because they fear getting their feet caught between the rails.
A few months ago, President Obama received a report that there were over 100,000 cattle guards in Colorado . Because Colorado ranchers had protested his proposed changes in grazing policies, he ordered the Secretary of the Interior to fire half of the cattle guards immediately.
Before the Interior Secretary could respond and presumably straighten him out, Vice-President Joe Biden intervened with a request that before any guards were fired, they be given six months of retraining.
