Friday, August 29, 2008

The Not So Great Escape

What an eventful week this has been. The woman says she'll be glad to see the back of it and that the only law-abiding barn resident is Jack. Jack gets so worried when something out of the ordinary happens that the woman has to spend lots of time cleaning up the explosive digestive results - some of which coat the walls. Jack gets quite annoyed with us and says "Jest quit yer tarryhootin around - I know cases where parties got shipped fer lesser crimes." I think he means what TJ calls "a date with the meet man". Nonsense. The most the woman does is gnash her teeth and call us assorted names. In fact, she is putty in our hooves. Jack can't quite believe it, so he stays on his best behaviour at all times.

This week the humans went off to a concert in "the city". Some outlandish orchestra called ZedZed Top - I assume that's what she meant, though she pronounced it ZeeZee Top. They followed what I take to be a law firm of singing attorneys called Brooks and Dunn. Never heard of the lot of them. A horse minder came at seven and put us in our rooms where the woman had left our dinners, the pellet portion covered with tea towels to discourage flies. All went well till about ten o'clock when the woman usually gives us our nightime hay. Molly became restless and discovered that the minder had neglected to put the clip on her door lock.

What followed was a spate of looting and pillaging that rivalled Ghengis Khan on one of his busier days. Molly made for the tack room and began wrestling the feed bin with the locking handles. She ended up ripping the top off with her teeth but was disappointed that it held only the vitamin and mineral concoction. She knocked over a gallon of Flax seed oil and and wrenched the top off Jack's senior feed. Fortunately there was only a bit left in the bottom. She ground the spilled pellets and oil into a gummy mass and added to the gloop with copious amounts of pony drool. Then the bag of Stable Boy powder was upended into the mess. We could hear her coughing and stomping in there but couldn't see her for the cloud of dust. She says that's when she became disoriented, owing to the lurching and sneezing, which caused her to accidently descend through the rubber tile floor, creating large craters in the dirt underneath. Then our electric fan fell into a hole and got stomped. Then half a bucket of soapy water got spilled and the unopened fly paper strips fell into that. Then she crashed into the cabinet with all the linaments and meds and cleaning products in it...There was more -but you get the picture.

Then the woman came in. She looked quite surprised to see Molly's door wide open and at first thought someone had stolen her for some unfathomable reason. I mean, we're not talking Secretariat here, though Molly would thump me for saying that. Then a pink, filth-encrusted nose appeared around the corner of the tack room door. Molly tried to tiptoe to her room but given that the woman was standing next to her and that Molly was a moving cloud of white dust , the plan failed miserably. The woman clutched her head and tried to assess the damage but fell into a hole in the floor. She babbled for awhile about the folly of owning something with a pony brain and then tried to calculate how much Molly had eaten. Not enough to make her sick apparently, as she produced two huge piles of manure as soon as she got into her room.

Meanwhile, Jack had gotten himself into a terrible state. He was calling loudly to the woman to tell her this wasn't his idea AT ALL. He tried to jump over the front of the stall into her arms and wouldn't touch his hay till she has comforted him for a good while. He had gotten himself hot and sticky with worry so she towelled him till he was dry and he stopped twitching and looking like someone on too much caffeine. He was still rattled the next morning.

Molly was not repentent in the least. When the woman spoke to her sternly about the damage she had caused and the potential for harm to her digestion, Molly simply curled her nostrils and turned into the corner. I did notice that she was particularly fawning with the woman for the next day or so. Molly knows very well she committed a huge crime but given a chance, she says she would do it all over again. She says she would just plan better next time now she has scouted the territory.

The cleanup continues and a new floor has been ordered. The humans are going away for the weekend, presumably to recover.

7 comments:

Dougie Donk said...

Oh dear, naughty Molly! Does she know that she will be forced to have a bath to get rid of all the gloop & ingrained powder? Most undignified!

My good wishes to Jack. I'm sure he will get less stressed as he learns to trust that your woman is never going to be nasty. It's taken me 18 months to feel confident enough to be a bit cheeky now & again. Like yours, my woman knows a wide range of Anglo-Saxon expletives, but never resorts to physical violence. Just as it ought to be for us all.

Buddy said...

Well I have been ROFLMAO for 10 minutes now - that Molly is just a hoot! I love her more and more everyday. So glad she is OK and didn't get into anything bad or eat too much. I don't suppose pictures were taken of the mess??

Tell Molly I love her!

XXOO

billie said...

Oh dear. Molly, Molly, Molly.

In this instance I must commiserate with the woman, who tries so hard to keep things organized and provides all those feedstuffs and supplements for the herd.

AND I must take this chance to brag on Rafer Johnson, who loves nothing more than to come into the feed room with me as I scoop and mix the various concoctions but NEVER tries to grab them. At least not until I move them into the barn aisle to soak - at that point he feels the tubs are fair game.

And I do realize that he is probably also outsmarting me by staking out the locations of all the goodies so that when the opportunity comes he can employ carpe diem.

But still - I have to say the pony here would NEVER be so mannered in the feed room.

Tell Jack he must learn to view these pony antics as a sort of live theatre - to be watched from the safety of his room with a rollicking sense of humor.

robert5721 said...

Sheaffer,
you and Jack are DONKEYS, and I note that other than Jack's bewilderment, you both had NOTHING to do with the mayhem!! You guys would have planned it out and gotten the FOOD instead of all that powder and a fan....Donkeys are always smarter than ponies....LOL....that is why we only have Donkeys at our farm..smile..
You should BOTH give her a big hug (the woman that is) and a kiss and just make sure that there are no tissues around..LOL..she really IS kind of good to myouall....
Mr Gale

completecare said...

Hi Sheaffer,
You certainly do have lots of "exciting happenings" at your farm. Not much goes on here - the senior horses don't do much out of the ordinary and of course, my mom and I are perfect. That is a quote from our human.
The most excitement we have is once a week when Uncle Ed and his Winsome Wife Wendy come to visit their horse Dakota. There is not much grooming goes on but lots of discussion about "Sheaffer and friends". My mom and I are ALL ears when that topic is brought up. We will even leave our haypile to get closer to the conversation as we do not want to miss a word. We were on the verge of heart failure the day your gate incident was discussed and we quite relieved to know you were not injured.
When we arrived here about six years ago my mom had a similar problem to Jack's. Any thing out of the ordinary - real or imagined caused my mom to have severe digestive upsets. The human often teased the farrier about wearing a plastic grocery bag on her head but she always refused. I think she thought there would be a picture taking devise close by!!!!
There were a few times that the farrier just lucked out by mere seconds. My mom stood perfectly and never caused a problem but all her stress built up inside. Hopefully, like my mom Jack will soon begin to understand that nothing bad is going to happen to him and that his delicate digestive system will settle down and he will be able to accept things as they come. My mom will now walk right up to the vet, farrier and even strangers and demand attention. A far cry from a few years ago.
I hope life at your place will calm down a little at least long enough to give your woman are breather.

Your fan,

Willy

robert5721 said...

Sheaffer,
YES!! WE WANT TO SEE PICTURES!! If there are none to be had, maybe you can talk the woman who did your excellent portrait into concocting a painting of it. I need this for my Sheaffer Picture Album that I am keeping....smile....
How did the slurpy kisses from you and Mr Jack go? he he he....
Mr Gale

ponymaid said...

The woman has returned from her short holiday. She said her nerves needed some recuperation time. She has tried to reassure Jack that he needn't feel responsible when anything "unusual" happens in his world. It seems from your collective comments that other donkeys, especially those with questionable beginnings, have the same worries as he does. We donkeys are very sensitive. Molly and Doc, on the other hand, feel no remorse for their criminal actions and merely use them as a dry run for future plotting. For example, Molly says a new floor in the tack/feed room will give her better traction - she has absolutely no guilt about having annihilated the old floor. It's obvious that donkeys are more highly evolved on the equine scale.