Okay, this is a quickie since I have to go to The Fabulous Todd's Fabulous Christmas Party in a few minutes so…
What is the weirdest horse/barn/farm thing that has ever happened to you?
I'll start:
Once upon a time I was a mare handler for a Quarterhorse breeder in Missouri. The owner and I were standing in the hall of the barn when it suddenly began to rain Kittens.
Okay, it was two kittens. But suddenly two kittens fell from the sky…
Okay, they fell through the trap door for the hayloft above us.
Anyway, two kittens fell from the hayloft and landed smack! on the ground between the two of us. One got up and ran away. The other had a broken neck.
We silently looked at each other, then up at the trap door, as if expecting more kittens. No more came.
Weird, huh?
15 comments:
I was born on a farm, falalala, and kittens were born in the barn, where we little kids were not allowed to go, my mother having decided the barn was too dangerous. But, in the old house, up in the attic where no one ever went, some kind of animal lived. Turned out to be a snake. One day, when I was quite small, some baby snakes just fell from the ceiling. Chicken snakes, not poisonous. Mom hated that house, but I still miss it. Give Todd a hug for me.
Dusty.
hobsolan: when your feet are sunburned so you can't walk.
You are definitely weird. I HATE snakes. Mike B (belgian as opposed to Mike C, the Clydesdale --there was no Mike A)hates snakes. My co worker hated snakes. A snake was blocking the gate to the horse pen. We were all convinced that it was a rattlesnake. Mikey was freaking out. I was freaking out, and so was my coworker -- he squeals like a girl around snakes, but then, so do I. We killed it. I swear that we buried it. We tried to put Mikey in the pen. (when that boy rears, he is freaking tall and since he can haul my husband straight into the air when he rears, I was not a problem for him to toss around.) The headless snake was back. The head kept showing up, too. This went on for awhile. We kept trying to dispose of the snake, but it kept coming back.
urrysc -- piglatin for scurry
The day that the tornado hit SLC, I was working up at the Park. I was going to start the day with Red. It was supposed to be bad weather and we wanted to start with a single. Red was soaked in frothy sweat when we arrived. We decided to take out the old reliable team of Bart and Belle. That went ok for a while, but something was definitely off with the horses. My co worker was trying to do trail rides and none of the horses were happy. We called down to the barn and were trying to decided whether or not to take the horses in for a while or to wait it out. We had kind of decided that at 1:00 we would take a break to see what the weather would do. My co worker sold a trail ride around 12:30 so Bart, Belle and I were hanging out. Bart, who at this time, was the idiot little brother and could not make ANY decision with out Belle, started to get SUPER antsy. I took them for a walk around the park to see if that would help. Bart started rearing and bucking in harness -- VERY unlike Bart. Belle just kind of stood there staring at him like he was the village idiot. I mean more than she usually does. Just up ahead of the horses, I could see a huge green cloud engulf the Delta Center and move up through the downtown area. We just kind of sat there for a minute. Our barn was down there. The city was tearing things apart down there for the Gateway center. If heavy metal crap got picked up, it might go flying through our horses. Ro was down there, at the barn! Kid was at Temple Square!!! We got the horses put away, but it then took hours to get back down out of the canyon. It was crazy.
oh, and everybody at the barn, kid and his driver, and us at the park, made it through, just fine. The next time that the horses worked, it was business as usual, for them. Bart was back to being a parasitic growth that Belle pulled around, Red was back to being his usual perky self, Kid was solid as a rock. The Delta Center did not fair so well. There was a fatality in SLC, but with all of us mountain idiots watching the dang thing, I think that we were pretty lucky. It wasn't even that big of a tornado.
Okay, BPA, I think you need to keep the Weird Crown--"It wasn't even that big of a tornado." Indeed.
I've heard that horses are afrighted of snakes. TV westerns, anyway. And yes, snakes do continue to thrash around a while after you behead them. Why did you bury it? Did you not own a cookpot?
Anyway, I'm glad you all came through the "not that big" tornado okay. And I'm still verklempt about the poor kitten.
bulascrk: the next governor of Illinois?
The crazy thing is that Belle is not afraid of snakes. She will walk right over them, (they like to lay in the road)
Now Bart, he is like Tom. He is afraid of his own urine.
sticurk -- What you get when you roast a trekkie
Okay, I'm trying to get Ro to post the tornado story from her perspective: which was at the barn as it came down North Temple and went up the to the grove ( August 11, 1999 if you've ever taken one of my grove tours, FYI)
Too tired to write more.
urmis: when you are not a Mr, Ms. or a Mrs.
Nothing truly bizarre ever happens to me. Just crazy stuff. I have a penchant for attracting crazy wild animals.
One dark, dark morning I went out to feed the horses, in the snow, and the dark. Did I mention it was dark? And walked into our hay shed and walked smack into a mangy, skinny, growling SCARY coyote who had decided to hole up in the hay. It was dark. I screamed like a girl and ran.
Another incident involved another dark morning. What is it with dark mornings and feeding the horses? Anyway, we stored our grain in the hay shed in a barrel. Well, someone, (me, maybe) failed to properly seal the feed barrel and something, namely a POSSUM!!!! found its way into the feed barrel and scared the holy moley out of me when I reached in to scoop some grain and ended up with an ugly, angry possum instead. *shudder*
And then there's the skunk that moved into my tack room. That was tons of fun!
My current hay shed has lockable doors and I keep my tack and grain INSIDE!
See, I attract wild animals!
Mine will have to be the day 30 Army dudes in full gear with guns were hiding on our trail and Klein and I didn't know it until we took 1 step onto the trail and 60 eyes looked up at us.
oh, you know, my mother is always harping at me to write some of my Missouri stories down, and i will get into the Possum one and the rabid kitten one someday when I've had more sleep but right now all i have to say, BPA, is Possums were the reason i got my dad's .22 rifle. And it got frequent work outs.
And Stace, a group of us were riding in Wisconsin years ago ( I wa riding dreamer0 when athe horses got spooky on the trail and about 2 dozen National guards guys stood up with freakin' BUSHES stuck into their helmets and scared the crap oout of us. No, we were not ON or NEAR a base...Of course when the retired circus rider on his retired circus rode past us standiing on it's back the whole time, with only side reins that was an odd experience too. Of course we had been drinking, but not that much!!!
Oh, pish tosh! No word verification!!!
That's retired circus HORSE and excuse the typos I'm beat. 10 rides tonight, then the front blew in and I was picking construction grit out of my teeth for the next hour. Not to mention digging it out of my eyeballs.
Oh crap, sorry, ME again. I meant Jenn not BPA, although you are both Jenns.
I need to go to bed. Bleh!
The Possum story:
Our first year on the farm I got chickens and used an old outbuilding as a coop. One morning I went out to collect eggs, the Kid in tow, and a possum had snuggled up in one of the nesting boxes I was about to stick my hand into.
The Kid said, "Kitty, kitty." I said "Hell NO!" and got The Husband out to the barn.
The possum was playing possum, which was good because we were rather slow at the time to react, so, The Husband decided that since we had no gun he would shoot the possum with "Hunting Arrows". Well, not being an avid archer, the first 4 tried from 15 feet away missed. Moving in to about 8 feet he finally hit it...in the thigh. From 3 feet away he got it in the neck, but not a mortal wound. Fron 9 inches away he got it in the head...still alive.
So I whacked it in head with a shovel. That did it.
The next time we went to visit my parents in Tucson my dad offered his single shot .22 squirrel gun that he'd had since he was about 12. We shipped it home. This was before 9/11 and you could still do that without having the Feds all over your ass.
That gun came in very handy to dispatch a variety of varmits and I still have it to this day.
But I guess I'm weird too, because I like snakes and never kill the ones like King Snakes that eat the pit vipers like Rattlers.
Possums, too, BTW, are immune to pit viper poison and eat them. So I guess I should have left them alone, but they are just so DAMN UGLY looking...
Everybody have a great day, I have to go to work.
I want to know how a kid from a big city like Chicago got interested in farmy things.
Tickled about the possum stories. While a bigger gun is always nice, what is really needed is a bigger DOG. We had a rescued pit bull (yes, from the dogfights) named Polly, who was very sweet, and her son, Bo, who was grumpy and unfriendly but very effective as a farm dog.
Pracie--a short, incorrect synopsis.
I have always loved horses. For at least 32 of the last 47 Christmases the #1 on my list has been "Pony", but since my parents, and later husband were not keen on me keeping one in my closet I needed land. Land in Chicago=$$$. Land in Missouri= cheap, so we bought a farm. A Hobby Farm. All I can say is: be careful what you ask for.
Hobby Farm my ass.
6 hours to mow the non pasture part of your yard is no hobby, it's work.
Soces; a decree, as in "So Says I"
Post a Comment