This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Last week, Sonny and I made our semi-annual pilgrimage to Tavaputs Ranch. Preparations were mindlessly easy. They always are when going to heaven.

Because the ranch is isolated atop a 10,000-foot plateau, we loaded everything necessary for survival into Sonny's truck: extra pants, toothbrush, most of our required medications, 15 pounds of cannon-grade black powder and 30 bowling balls.

No matter how prepared, TN Ranch is no place for unsupervised fools. There are far too many ways to get hurt if you're the sort of person who doesn't pay attention.

Within five hours of arriving at the ranch, I had managed to slip in the mud and cut my hand in such a way that it required Super Glue and 6 feet of duct tape to stop the bleeding. Meanwhile, Sonny was badly gored in the leg by a set of elk horns not attached to an actual elk.

The two scariest things at 10,000 feet are the weather and the wildlife. They frequently remind us that human beings are not as in charge of the ranch as we think.

First, the weather. Driving up to the ranch we encountered snow, rain, hail, mud, lightning, fog, wind and thunderheads just during the last 10 miles, most of which is uphill and along the edge of a cliff.

Did you know that it's possible to steer a pickup truck with your butt? We do now. Traveling over Bruin Point, the pickup kept wanting to swap ends in the mudslide that used to be the road.

We managed to keep the truck on the "road" by clutching the seat with our frightened hams and frantically yanking it in the direction we wanted it to go. It worked.

Then there's the wildlife. Tavaputs is home to 75 percent of the most dangerous animals in North America: snakes, coyotes, bear, moose, elk, cows, extraterrestrial space creatures and hummingbirds.

You think I'm kidding. I'm not. Tavaputs Ranch is the site of one of the first X-File cattle mutilations to occur in Utah back in the '70s. (See attachment.)

I've never seen an extraterrestrial at the ranch, and probably wouldn't care much if I did. I'm far too busy ducking hummingbirds to worry about the possibility of a space monster operating on cows.

Ounce-for-ounce, hummingbirds are the meanest and most aggressive animal at the ranch. At any given time during the summer, the ranch is home to half a million of them.

At their peak, hummingbirds seem to pose a serious danger. Just walking from the bunkhouse to the main lodge is like taking a stroll through No Man's Land. Bullets snap, dart, zing, buzz and scream past your head.

Periodically, one of these bullets will stop right in front of your face and closely examine the possibility that one of your eyeballs is actually a nectar-filled flower.

A needle-sharp beak an inch from your eye can be disconcerting. Although I've never actually seen anyone's eyeball get sucked dry, I have had hummingbirds tap on the reflection in my sunglasses.

For this reason, I feel the best course of action is to cover my eyes and blindly flee, even if it's into the side of a cabin. In fact, that's how I cut my hand.

Fortunately for humans, the one thing hummingbirds are most aggressive with is each other. They battle non-stop for feeding and breeding rights.

I've seen them gang up on squirrels and larger birds to protect feeder bottles and lady hummingbirds perched coyly about, waiting for someone to buy them a drink.

Fortunately, the hummingbird problem wasn't so bad this time. The hail, lightning, rain and thunder periodically forced them to seek cover, during which we grudgingly worked in it.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley. Find his past columns at http://www.sltrib.com/lifestyle/kirby.