Chanticleer and Houdini Horse

I was up at 4 o'clock this morning catching roosters with Whit.  Time for the freezer.  Now that he's gone with them, I'm just realizing how much racket they made with their crowing.  Ah, coffee and sweet silence.  Sort of.  The rest of the bird population is noisy enough around here that they wake the toddler by 6:30 every morning if I don't shut her window, which I don't.  That's part of summer in Maine that I don't want her to forget anyway.

As I enjoyed my coffee and the early morning sun, while I finished reading Kafka's The Metamorphosis in preparation for school this fall, I happened to notice Scooby leaning way out over the not-so-electric fence to get the fresh, green grass on this side of it.  One can hardly blame him; the grass is always greener on the other side of any fence, isn't it?  I really didn't want TBear or Whit to have to fix another fence today, however, so I put my shoes back on and wandered out to give both Scooby and Pat some lovies, and gently push Scooby back to where he belonged.  After straightening out and retightening the fence, I went back in to finish my book.  (That's a really strange story, by the way.  Lots of existentialist symbolism in it.)

As I was reading, I looked up again to make sure there were three horses on the other side of the fence and noticed that the fence was completely down now, and I only counted two horses out my window.  Hmm.  This is the common theme of my early mornings here.  Straining to look out the windows without hauling myself up from my comfortable spot on the couch, I finally spotted Scooby grazing peacefully behind the tractor parked in the yard, looking as though he might actually be hiding from me.  Perhaps I give him too much credit.  Then again, seeing how he works with Whit, how he reads Whit's voice, and how he seems to know what Whit is saying, I'm pretty sure Scooby's grazing method is premeditated.  Especially since he grazes farther out into the lawn, as I notice him noticing me with my camera.  He knows that I am intentionally ignoring the fact that he's on the wrong side of the fence.  Again.  We play this game a lot, he and I.

Patrick, on the other hand, doesn't like white electrical tape.  He doesn't like white lines on the ground or on the road either.  He doesn't distinguish between white lines that zap and white lines that don't, so he just avoids all white lines, which can get pretty amusing when we're trying to drive the wagon down the road and Dig Safe has painted a white line across the road.  Scooby keeps Pat going in the right direction (forward), but Patrick will sort of leap over the white line without touching it.  Needless to say, Pat won't cross the wire tape Scooby has knocked down when he leans too far out over it to get to the verdant grass on my side.  So Pat paces and pretends he likes it better where he is, while Scooby comtemptuously grazes a few tantalizing feet away from him.

Continuing to ignore my errant horse, I know that Whit is due to drive back in any time now, and that he will put Scooby back in where he belongs.  I also know that poor Scooby is in for a shock again soon.  When Whit gets tired of standing up fence posts and reattaching the wire tape, he'll turn the fence back on again for awhile to remind Scooby why white isn't his favorite color.  It's almost annoying to think of how smug Pat will look.  Then again, I might be giving him too much credit.  They are, after all, just horses...though they do have Belgian draft-size personalities.

Oh look, here comes Whit now with a nice bag of chicken for my freezer.  Sorry, Scooby, old man, time's up.