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.

Animal Issues. Yeah, I know, no surprises there.

There are certain things that will wake me from a sound sleep.  One of them is the sound of a baby crying, and, apparently, it doesn't seem to matter what species of baby.  Two weeks ago when I went to bed my tiny cat was hugely pregnant.  The poor thing would follow us around the house and then collapse to lie on the floor... until we moved to another room when she would have to get up and move with us and collapse again.  On this particular Sunday night she jumped (with some difficulty, I might add) up on my bed and went to sleep at my feet.

Shortly after midnight I was awakened by the tiniest little mew.  I sat bolt upright knowing exactly what it was, but was very surprised to see it was on the end of my bed!!  Then, of course, I was bummed because she was having her kittens on my bed for Pete's sake!  I got a towel and carefully put it under Stella Louise and her new kitten to save my quilt as best I could.  For the next few hours I read and watched as Stella produced four tiny kittens in all.  Here's a picture of them this morning, two weeks later.  They are the sweetest little fluffy creatures.

Whit looked over the side of their box this morning and said, "Huh.  It's going to be awhile before there's any good eatin' there."  Nice.  Look at them all lined up, snoozing.  It's been a really long time since we've had kittens (and will be a really long time before we have more) so we're enjoying these.  Especially since they're all spoken for already.

Another noise that will wake me from a sound sleep is the sound of hooves thundering down our road and across my yard.  I know exactly what that noise belongs to too.  I will awaken to the sound of one set of hooves (ah, that would be Scooby) walking across my yard, even if he's tiptoeing, which he doesn't because everyone knows a Belgian couldn't tiptoe if his life depended on it.  However, the sound of thundering hooves coming down the road always makes me sit bolt upright and cringe because that means the whole trio is out and terrorizing the traffic, or heavens to Murgatroyd, the walkers!  Okay, I really doubt they're terrorizing anyone because they tend to go on their walk-abouts pretty early, before my friend-who-doesn't-like-animals is out walking.  Furthermore, there isn't much traffic on our road, especially not at that hour on a Saturday morning.

So on this particular Saturday morning, the sound of hooves thundering back up the road at 6am once again made me leap for my shorts and shoes from a sound sleep.  (I guess Scooby had knocked enough of the fence down that Pat followed him this time.)  Shortly after the two goons went past my window I realized that all three horses were out when poor old Magnum came wheezing up the road. It's tough keeping up with buddies who are running when you have asthma.

My garden is nothing to brag about, but yesterday TBear and I spent about 4 hours reclaiming it from the weeds that had sprouted with all the rain we've had lately.  We discovered that someone might have planted the beans a little too deep because there is a serious lack of plants in the first two rows.  So I had TBear try again with some more beans.  Pat and Scooby ran around my garden when they came galloping back into the yard, but, um, someone forgot to give Magnum the memo...

Ah well, he did a nice job patting them down into the soil.  I guess.

It took a few more minutes to get the bad dogs back into their field.  I managed to take hold of Wheezy there on the left (aka Magnum) and lead him back to their pen, whinnying in distress because he felt left behind again.  Little did the lunk realize he was actually leading the herd at that point. :)  After racing around the field behind my garden there, Scooby (on the far right) finally stood still long enough for Whit to put a lead on him.  I took him back to the field while Whit chased Pat around a little more.  Pat is naughty, no two ways about it.  He didn't want to be led.  I opened the gate for him so he could "escape" inside to his buddies without having to suffer the indignity of being caught.  Here they are.  Busted.

I hear a few cars going by on the road now.  Look at them standing there waiting for their breakfast like nothing ever happened.

I'm going to go have another cup of coffee.

A Walk in the Snow

February vacation for the public schools was this past week, though that doesn't usually affect us. However this particular week we had a snowstorm drop another 10 inches of snow or so, and a nasty virus went through our house with a slightly more debilitating effect. While I wouldn't exactly call it school vacation, TBear wound up spending a few days either in bed or on the couch. However, we had a hockey tournament to go to in Bangor on Friday evening, so on Friday morning, after determining that TBear no longer had a fever, I decided we needed to get out of the house, breathe some fresh air, and see whether or not TBear was going to feel up to playing hockey that evening.

We set off down the road with our dog, Jagger. Shortly one of our black-and-white cats joined us. Usually both of them walk with us, but the other one was in the house, I remembered after we left. He missed out this time, poor guy. The day after the snowstorm was bright and sunny and beautiful. The temperatures were in the 30's so the snow was heavy on the trees.

After we walked down the road and back, we wandered around the farm to see what was up with all our creatures. Our sheep and the horses all prefer to be outside, either eating the hay or lounging on it, and catching some rays.
I walked back behind the big barn to see how Loon and Dimi were faring in their field. They came running for chin scratches. Or maybe they thought I had grain...
Whit was working in the barn behind me as I took this picture. The goats didn't care about what I was doing; they were all curious as to the noise he was making. Notice where they are...inside. They prefer to lounge in the doorway of the barn rather than out in the sunshine.
I broke down and started feeding the birds after the last snowstorm. I always feel so sorry for them when it snows. This marvelous spruce tree in my dooryard is very, very tall. It houses all kinds of birds, and I like to leave the feeders protected under its branches. Those branches also afford an excellent place for the birds to quickly hop into if the cats lurk too closely under the feeder. We have black-capped chickadees, titmice, juncos, sparrows, blue jays and woodpeckers. I saw some finches on the feeder in the front yard under the maple trees. Shhh... don't tell the cats.
After our refreshing walk, TBear decided he was feeling better enough to play hockey, so we packed our overnight bags and prepared to head to Orono.