How To Frighten A Donkey Nearly To Death

This newest piece of outrage happened to me last week and I only now have the strength to write about it. I'm surprised my hair didn't all turn white over night. She's apologized but I am considering legal action to recover my medical and psychiatric expenses.

One night last week the aqua gods or whoever is responsible for the skies opening, turned all the taps on full blast for an entire day and night. Ark building weather if ever I've seen it. Jack and I stayed in the run-in and watched the horses squelch around the paddock. The woman let us in early and gave us our hot meal with tidbits and good sized piles of hay. We dined and then fell asleep to the sound of rain drumming on the roof. A very nice sound when one is inside rather than out.

At the hour of our late night feed we heard a strange rustling sound emerging out of the dark. It was a sound that required two ears forward but nothing too alarming. Then the light went on. Standing there was a figure clad in a plastic shavings bag, wearing a smaller plastic bag on it's hideous head. It carried half of a cloth sphere, held over it's head on a stick. I let out a mighty trumpet and tried to climb in with Jack. It collapsed the half sphere and made coughing and glubbing noises. "Sheaffer," it said. "it's me!" That confirmed my suspicion that it was an evil spectre come to steal my soul. Rained poured off the plastic garments and it's beady eyes fastened on me. Then it advanced toward me with it's bony claws extended. I tried to crawl under the partition into Jack's stall but onward it came.

It removed the bag from it's head and something about it looked familiar. It was HER of course, as I realized when my heart rate began to climb down from the stratosphere. She had made arm holes and an opening for her head in an evil shavings bag and donned it as a raincoat. Words fail me - I mean, who else would dream up such a demented and hare-brained scheme and not think of the consequences? I don't care if the other three paid not one iota of attention to her garb. She knows my sensibilities are highly tuned. Jack said "Lansakes, boy, ain't ya never seen one a them portable ruffs (he means roofs) they tote around in the rain?" I didn't sleep a wink for the rest of the night and was quite short with her the next day.

The weather has been fine since then, thank goodness, but today it was cold enough for our water trough to have frozen nearly solid over night. While the woman was fiddling with the ice-filled hose, Molly took things into her own hoofs. She broke the ice with a tremendous blow from a front hoof only to pull forth an enormous disc of ice that clung to her pastern like a bracelet. Not one to panic, she stamped her foot in annoyance and finally pulled the thing free with her teeth. The woman sighed and rolled her beady eyes. She left muttering about the sensitivity genes in our barn being unevenly distributed. We have no idea what she was babbling about.