Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Mom's animals - the ones the cougars avoid


The day I was supposed to return home from visiting family last January, it snowed. I had forgotten how beautiful snow was but the alpaca was not impressed. Now that I think of it, the alpaca is never impressed. She's always looking down her nose at us and threatening to spit. I have two bags of her fleece though and I'm hoping to get more. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it since I don't know how to spin or anything. That story of Sleeping Beauty getting poked by the spinning needle and falling into a coma haunts me to this day! That and Bambi's Dad getting shot. Oh yes, some day when I don't know what to talk about, remind me to tell you the story about our pet calf Butch which seemingly came up missing and apparently ended up in our freezer.

Mom and Apollo got some hay out of the big barn and drove it down to the horses and alpaca. I noticed Mom didn't try anything sneaky with Apollo like she did with Aimee and me as kids. You know, the typical loving parental stuff like swerving around to "kill a snake" while we precariously clung to the tailgate, slamming on the brakes to skid over the snake again (and again and again...), driving over clumps of snow, dirt or horse dung which hit our feet, causing them to fly up, splashing in water or speeding up and driving through cow pies which then splattered all over our pants. *glaring*


It must have been torture for the horses as they stood there and heard Mom and Apollo over in the barn. I'm sure they could smell the hay too. Unfortunately, I left the gate open after Mom drove her truck down into the field to drop the hay off in the barn. One of the horses ran out and started to take a trip down the road but it only took her a few seconds to realize there was nothing but snow as far as the eye could see and that Mom had all the food. She snorted and galloped past me, kicking her feet in the air. Lesson learned for both of us!

There's nothing like an accusing look from an uptight, cold and hungry animal. Even more so from two crazed horses that haven't been ridden in years. Yikes! At least there's no danger of their suspiciously ending up in the freezer.

2 comments:

Wendee said...

Wow - your moms place looks magical in the snow. (I'm an Idaho cowpoke, so it makes me reminisce.) A big difference from SoCal, though...

aimee said...

I had successfully buried some of those memories... splashing cow patties... garrr!!!