In the last coupla days, I have noticed that my mares, who are all together in one pasture, seemed to be rather plump compared to all the other horses here. Tess is 22, Gwen is 15 and Sam is 8. So, I have youth, middleage and elder together and they ALL have butterball profiles kinda like Violet Beauregard of Willy Wonka fame (she was the blueberry – I hate when I’m the only one who gets a reference…).
Anyway…
Why are they so, ummm, hearty when the others are just regular?
MY THOUGHT PROCESS
Well, the mares are in a large 3 acre pasture. There are only three of them and it has been raining… maybe there is enough grass now to have filled them out and added some, ahem, girth?
But, all the other horses are in large pastures and they aren’t fat portly. I haven’t given the mares any different feed. In fact, since it was now getting much colder at night, they should be burning calories, not gaining.
This sudden weight gain was very odd indeed.
THIS MORNING
I have been pondering this sudden weight gain for a few days. I had even decreased their morning rations – which was difficult since they are perpetually giving me the “We’re starving” look.
A clue came this morning… I had to clamber up a hay stack to throw down a few more bales. (I like to make sure I bring the bales down in a ‘bale created’ step-ladder organized climbing surface so that I never need to teeter on a real ladder stacked against a haypile. I hate that. I’d rather climb bales to the top than climb the top of a ladder and push from there. Yikes.)
Back to the story…
OK, so I was on top of one of the stacks and I turned around to see this:
Hmmmm.
I know the guys didn’t stack the hay that way… Why would they build a tall brick mountain of hay and leave a huge hole against the wall?
And then it all came together for me…
Those dastardly mares had nosed the window open, eaten all the bales within reach, and then closed the window again!
I COULDN’T BELIEVE IT.
I couldn’t believe what I had deduced so I walked around the barn to see if the window was truly not latched properly and that they could open it with their nubile noses.
Sure enough, it wasn’t latched.
In fact, there were telltale signs of their break-in… The barn outer wall was filthy where they were rubbing against it to reach on their tippy-hooves to get inside the window. The window had teeth marks on it. The part of the window frame that they pushed closed with their noses was also very dirty.
And, the bales that were missing still had their strings hanging there.
WUDN’T ME…
As I stood back there with my camera, Tess walked right up and said, “Wasn’t me.”
Me: Sure it was
Tess: Nope. Can’t even reach that far, see…
Me: It was you and your sidekicks. Look, Gwen is just as guilty as you are.
Tess: Yep, it was her. Not me.
Gwen: Mooooooooommmmm! Don’t blame me for this. It was YOUR idea.
Tess: OK, it wasn’t Gwen, it was Sam.
Sam (from across the pasture): Huh? I know I’m too short. Look at me!
Gwen: Well, you ate everything that fell on the ground!
Tess: OK it was those tricky ponies. They broke into our pasture and ate the bales.
Gwen (walking away and doing her best Col. Klink impression): “I know nothink.”
Me: Um, the ponies are even shorter than you are. There is no possible way they did this unless they were standing on your backs.
Tess (looking earnest): Yup. That is what they did.
Me: Uh huh. OK. If that is what you want me to believe…
Tess: That is my final statement on the issue. Oh, and you don’t need to check the other windows as I already did and they are locked. Just sayin’…
HORSE AND MAN is a blog in growth… if you like this, please pass it around!
Copyright
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
