SO, I owe everyone a catch-up for the week past at the Stable.
Monday - A new week of Horse Lover's Camp, which equals new kids and rampant craziness.
Tuesday - I was put in charge of feeding lunch to the horses, which entails climbing up the thin worn ladder steps (I'm not a ladder-person) into the hayloft. On Wednesday, I learned the left side is used to being fed first. One of the volunteers told me when I was half finished with the right side, but I'd already sort of figured it out by the left side horses neighing, stomping, and generally having a conniption while I fed the right side. By Thursday I'd remembered to bring scissors with me to cut open new bales of hay so I didn't have to run back down to the office.
After everyone has a flake of hay, I get to lug out the hose & water. Not bad until I'm done and have to roll the hose back up and get covered in mud (I try not to dwell too much on the fact that it isn't just mud).
Wednesday - I'm in the lounge and Rikki brings in half the day camp kids to wash their hands before going up to the outdoor arena. I see Burke, one of our horses, walking by outside. I think, "Someone has to be leading him - they're probably just standing on the other side where I can't see them."
One of the day camp kids, looking out the windows, plaintively exclaims, "Um, the horses are running away."
Behind Burke follows the two other horses who had been in the field with him. Rikki turns to me, jaw hanging open, and asks with a note of panic, "How'd they get out?"
"If I knew that, they wouldn't be out!"
Rikki & I head onto the porch, kids in tow until Rikki shoos them back into the lounge with a warning, "Okay, this is an EMERGENCY! Stay in here no matter what, and behave while we round up the horses."
The stables are just off of Rt 88, which is a main road and stays somewhat busy. There's a sign warning of horse & rider crossing, but most people don't notice, or don't heed it. So, Rikki & I are faced with 3 unbridled horses trotting through the parking lot towards 88, and only the two of us to stop them. If they make it across the road, they pretty much have free reign of the park. We'd need golf carts and lassos to hunt them. Okay, probably just other horses and some carrots, but I like the image of lassoing a horse from a golf cart.
Luckily, something spooked the horses & they went galloping away from the road, past us, and into the stable. Rikki ran after them through the breezeway to shut the doors behind them. I ran through the lobby (and massing children watching with glee) to cut them off before they ran through the wash room door and up the hill into the woods. (There are down sides to keeping horses in a 1700acre park)
On another stroke of luck, 2 horses ran into Troubles stall (hoping there was good food in there) and the third headed for the next stall down (Doc's). As Rikki came in through the breezeway, one of the horses ran from Trouble's stall into Doc's & I slid the door shut on both of them. Rikki headed off the third horse & tracked down bridles so we could lead them back to the meadow.
I got to be the one to stand calf deep in horse shit with a horse at each hand while Rikki went to get the final escapee. Damn brats kept running back up to the gate.
So, the question is, how did three horses get out at once? Certainly all three of them didn't jump the fence at once. And no one would have been forgetful enough to leave the gate open. That leaves us with one option, the bastards opened the latch themselves!
As you can likely imagine, this left us jumpy all day. At one point while sweeping the lobby, I looked up & saw Guiness's ass headed out through the washroom. I dropped the broom with terror-filled thoughts circling around, "Oh, no. Not again!" Turns out Guiness's own was taking him up to the pasture on the hill, wish she'd have told me! Every time I heard foot steps, I looked for the horse in the parking lot, which always turned out to just be a customer on the store porch.
Rikki and I knew we were just edgy, and as soon as the day ended, we'd be fine. Sadly, however, our fears did not go unconfirmed. Less than an hour after the three horses escaped the meadow, Jen called from the top of the hill on her cell phone saying one of the campers had let a horse get loose.
Rikki went running up the hill to help round up Flash. Elizabeth headed down the hill to lock him in if he ran into the stables. Flash headed for the tree line.
Flash is our cute new pony we got last weekend. Cute, but a pain in the ass. He ended up getting spooked by something in the woods (probably a squirrel) and veered down the path to the stables, right for poor little Elizabeth (a 13year old volunteer at the stables). Liz dove for cover and avoided getting trampled, even managed to recover in time to lock Flash in his stall when he came running through the stable.
By lunch, everyone was ready to call off day camp.
Thursday - Blessedly uneventful!!!!
Friday - The Budweiser Clydesdales are coming to visit in 2 weeks. (6 clydesdales, and the donkey) In order to accommodate them, we need to move some of our horses to the back stables. Jeanette told me to take the hose out to the back stables and fill the water buckets after I finished watering all the horses in the stables.
She said something about "unattach that and connect it to the green hose." I took that to mean unattach the hose. I rolled our 100ft hose over my shoulder to lug it out to the back stables, thoroughly soaking my right side. I find the green hose, and realize it's not attached to anything. I walk around the back stables & can't find any spigot. This is when I realize Jeanette meant to detach the nozzle attachment and connect the white hose to the green hose.
Much lugging and rolling later, every bucket in the vicinity was full, I was wet with both sweat and hose water, and I swear the damn horses were laughing at me!
Saturday - My day off! I didn't get out of bed until nearly noon. I've been behind on my reading and was looking forward to catching up today. The only item of interest today is the dream I had last night.
We've been having trouble getting the pool in a condition that is swimmable. Mostly because we know nothing about pools, and all the companies that could come help us are booked until about now. A man is coming Monday to hopefully open our pool, but that's not soon enough to keep my subconscious from acting up.
The frogs are back in the pool. I'm hoping for more spermzillas before the man comes to fill the pool with chemicals. In my dream, I was netting out the pool and going through the muck and leaves I was sifting out looking for tadpoles. I managed to catch two or three tadpoles. Then an octopus. Some squid. In no time there were seven-foot-long black catfish swimming around in our pond, fighting the 8ft squid ala-2000 Leagues Under the Sea.
When I'd finished netting out the pool and headed in for dinner, Gram was serving calamari. I asked her when she got calamari & she said, "Well I didn't want to waste all the squid and octopus you've been fishing out of the pool." I didn't want to hurt her feelings, because I love calamari at Red Lobster, but Red Lobster doesn't stock their kitchen from our back yard.
Soon various eels and jellyfish had joined the fracus. My two year old brother came to visit and was almost eaten by an 8ft squid I'd fished out of the pool & laid on the deck.
I told Gram, "I have no idea how we managed to get all these creatures in our pool! I mean, tadpoles are one thing, but I don't know of any local octopus population."
Gram replied, "Well that's just what we get for filling the pool with city water."
Tomorrow, I will be mucking stalls, and *possibly* riding a little. Look for another post from me next Saturday if I don't manage to sooner. Have a happy 4th! Look out for the jellyfish if you go swimming.
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