Just after day break. In the quiet stillness of early morning.
Suddenly the quiet is shattered.
I bolt from a sound sleep, to find myself sitting upright fully awake, alert, and waiting.
I look around the room in it's dim light, I see the animals with stunned looks. They had just moments ago been sound asleep as well. Now they, My Blind cat Iddy, my son's dog Bdude, my husbands neurotic cat Neko, (They each all stories in themselves),
stood alert and poised to run.
We sat on edge, Waiting , listening,
for the next thump, bump, and roll of what surely had to have been an earthquake. We all sat, not breathing, waiting for the next assault that would have us instantly on the run to safety.
Then out of the black stillness, it came!! ... A shrill, way to loud for where the sound should have come from.
The scared, questioning, urgent, calling. Right outside my bedroom door. The glass door that opens up to the deck in the backyard., The shrill cry of a weanling's whinny!
...Really??.. peryy#%$#$%&&^%$R#eirwyeyrwokd$%^&%^*$^%& !!!!!
I get up, look outside, and standing right on the other side of the glass,
in a stance that always reminds me of a scared Bambi on the ice,... I find my oldest.
The largest, smartest, most troublesome of this years foals.
"Hopper" Who we also lovingly refer to as "For Sale"
I look off to the side and sure enough, I see his two trusty side kicks standing just off to the side of the deck, with a look of not being to sure they want any part of this trouble on their faces.
Oh Geesh!!! I walk out of the room and put on my boots, husbands hooded Carthart jacket.. (honey, .. you forgot your jacket! :)
Now all suited up. Sweats and Boots, being the vision of fashion that I must be, I prepare to head outside to put the happy wanderers back where they belong.
I go through the kitchen and cautiously open the glass door, talking to the foal on the Deck so I don't scare him into jumping through the other glass door he is standing next too! I manage to get out without spooking him. (Thank goodness my foals are conditioned to all kinds of things since being born and little spooks them, but ..there is always a chance..Anyway..)
I step onto the deck, it's slick and slippery from the freezing rain during the night. I leave him be and step off towards the other two standing there, wondering what to do.. I leave them also, walking right past them I head off towards the barn, talking and calling to them. "Come on kids, come on,.. Let's go, come on"... Kind of like human 2 year olds or toddlers. If you stand there and try to coax them, they will most of the time just stand there and look at you. I figured this was the "safest" way to get them to move. Thank goodness it worked. Within moments they were trotting up behind me. All of us on our way back to the barn that for some reason they couldn't find on there own? I know an open gate, that greener grass, the unknown , the adventure of what's out there is just to much for a baby horse to resist. !! That an outing, any outing that is without "chaperons" even when it goes wrong, is far more exciting then the barn.
And in those early hours, happy it wasn't an earthquake outside in the damp and cold in sweats and boots, I am ever so thankful that my husband, and Brian my Son-in-law this past summer dug the post holes, and finally got the gate to the front of the property up!
As this morning there was plenty of evidence that these renegades had explored that avenue sometime prior, to scaring the heck out of everyone ususpecting and asleep inside
that other building they can see from the pasture but had never been near before... So now, they are now back home inside the barn, munching happily on grass hay as though nothing out of the ordinary had gone on at all.
And so the morning goes... :)
