Hurricane Helene-Relief Mules Meet Their Fate in North Carolina
Within a few days after Hurricane Helene altered the landscapes in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee last fall, Mountain Mule Packer Ranch trucked mules and personnel into the North Carolina Blue Ridge. Loading food and supplies onto the sturdy mules at a trail head, mule skinners started transporting those items into hard-hit areas cut off from road transportation. In my post published at the time, I compared the effort to how the armies used mules to haul supplies while on the march.
Like their Civil War counterparts hauling everything from food to guns and ammunition as the armies moved hither and yon across the South, the Mountain Mule Packer Ranch mules kept going. They delivered supplies through the fall, transported toys and gifts so children could enjoy Christmas at hard-hit Embreeville in eastern Tennessee, and plodded onward into 2025.
Vader, Amigo, and Kev were among the mules regularly delivering food and supplies wherever needed in the Helene-shredded region. All three were in a pasture at Mountain Mule Packer Ranch on Saturday night, February 9. Located at Mount Ulla between Charlotte and Raleigh in North Carolina, the business specializes (among other things) in “handling, haltering, saddling and loading pack animals for supply-line operations,” according to https://mountainmulepackers.com/.
A tree falling on the pasture’s fence created an opening through which the three mules escaped. They got onto a nearby road, only to be struck and killed by passing vehicles.
“We could not be more heartbroken over this incredible loss, and it is with great pain that we share it with you, as we know many of you have also fallen in love with these sweet animals,” a Mountain Mule official wrote on the ranch’s Facebook page. “We will forever honor them for their faithful, loyal, and honorable service to others as they were used in training of some of the finest military members our country has, and especially the countless hours of work they have done to help so many families affected by Hurricane Helene. Besides their service, they were more importantly a part of our family, and loved.
“Please pray for us at Mountain Mule Packers and Mission Mules as we cope with this terrible loss while continuing to go forward in their honor. We know that God can comfort us and show us the way going forward,” the post indicated.
Civil War buffs familiar with the January 1863 Mud March and other wartime road-transportation fiascoes have read accounts of mules (and horses) getting bogged down on rain-muddied, bottomless Southern roads. Sometimes the gooey mud or sand swallowed an animal whole; soldiers wrote about seeing only the ears marking a mule’s final resting place in a decrepit road.
Like their Civil War counterparts, Vader, Amigo, and Kev kept moving until circumstances caught up with them. Unlike their wartime counterparts, however, these three mules were mourned (at least based on local media reports). Some soldier somewhere probably wrote something good about a mule between 1861 and 1865, but I have yet to find such a comment.
That is so sad about those mules dying. But I have to say, the utilization of them in such a horrible situation like that of the destruction wrought by the hurricane makes eminent sense. It is truly ‘outside the box’. It is an example of the old ‘tried and true’ being employed to address a tough situation, and washed out roads and bridges is about as tough a circumstance to overcome as there is. God Bless all of those folks, and animals, who are pressing on to get supplies and other relief to those people who were hit so hard!
Are you familiar with the angry confrontation between Robert Lee and a mule skinner? I don’t have it to hand so I forget the year and the place, but it was one of the few times someone came to the defense of a mule. The mule skinner lost. It may have been in 1864, during the Overland Campaign. I think it’s in Freeman’s biography, or his ‘Lee’s Lieutenants.’
Try the Charge of the Mule Brigade about a somewhat overblown event in the Battle of Wauhatchie, during the opening of the Cracker Line in late 1863!
Mules are noble, utilitarian beasts. Thank you for acknowledging their good service.
Mule stories are aplenty in veteran-written books, I sure hope there’s a couple positive mule adventures to be found. This one highlights a mule that wasn’t immovable.
Sam Watkins at Shiloh: “One fellow, a courier, who had had his horse killed, got on a mule he had captured, and in the last charge…just charged right ahead by his lone self, and the soldiers said, ‘Just look at that brave man, charging right in the jaws of death.’ He began to seesaw the mule and grit his teeth, and finally yelled out, ‘It arn’t me, boys, it the blasted old mule. Whoa! Whoa!’ ” from his book, “Co. Aytch”