Christmas at Bent’s Old Fort

Life on the American Frontier . . . The Old West comes alive . . . Nineteenth Century history . . . Living History at its best.

No trip to Colorado is complete without a stop at Bent’s Old Fort.  This adobe fort has been reconstructed just as it was in the 1830’s.  It was the most important stop on the Santa Fe Trail, between Missouri and New Mexico.  History comes alive at Bent’s Old Fort, thanks to many local re-enactors, craftsmen, volunteers, and park employees.

Stop by on the first weekend in December, and you’ll see a 19th Century Christmas come to life.  “Witness for yourself the joys, pleasures and pastimes of the 1840s at an isolated trading post. The spirit of the season comes alive with wagon rides, games, toy making and other holiday festivities. The event begins Friday evening December 4 with candlelight tours of the fort and continues all through Saturday, December 5 culminating with another evening of candlelight tours.”

Christmas at Bent’s Old Fort is a special event not to be missed.  Check it online at Bent’s Old Fort – Special Events.

Did You Know?
Bent’s Fort was on the boundary with Mexico in the 1830s and 1840s. It was 600 miles from the nearest town in Missouri.

Time to kick yourself out the door

Autumn is a beautiful season.  Oh, I know about the rain, sometimes snow, too.  Yes, there’s wind, mud, bare trees, what else?  And fall is still my favorite season.  The air is fresh (most places), the temperature is invigorating, the sun is inviting, what more do you want?  So my simple challenge to you is:  Kick yourself out the door.  Get outside, even if you may not feel like it.  You’ll be glad you did.

Once you get out there, where do you head?  If it’s hiking, check out the 3500+ hikes that are detailed at Find a Hike, on backpacker.com. Most of the hikes at this site are GPS-enabled, to view online, beam to your printer or wireless, or add to your online profile.

But wait!  Don’t head out without some decent gear to keep you safe and dry.  There are all kinds of gear checklists at backpacker, too. Just be sure to notice the gear lists in the top box, and don’t get tricked by the shopping lists below them.

Maps?  Need more maps?  The website for each US National Forest has trail maps.

Ok, one more thing:  Try keeping a little bag always loaded with flashlights, batteries, toilet paper, trowel, first aid kit, and water filter.  This way you can make a quick getaway when the hiking bug bites.  You’ll have some of the minimal preparations already done.

This photo is one I took at the top of Old La Veta Pass, Colorado, a couple of months ago.  And by the way, next time you have a good hike, I’d like to hear about it.  Thanks!

Old La Veta Pass is great for hiking

The Code of the West – for landowners

“The Code of the West was first chronicled by the famous western writer, Zane Grey. The men and women who came to this part of the country during the westward expansion of the United States were bound by an unwritten code of conduct. The values of integrity and self-reliance guided their decisions, actions and interactions.”

The Code of the West has opened many peoples’ eyes to the realities of living in the rural West.  The Code helps people to make informed and realistic decisions about living Out West. The body of this document and most of the original wording was taken from a work by John Clarke, a Commissioner for Larimer County, Colorado.

“It is important for you to know that life in the country is different from life in the city. County governments are not able to provide the same level of service that municipal governments provide. To that end, we are providing you with the following information to help you make an educated and informed decision when choosing to purchase rural land . . .”

READ THE CODE OF THE WEST

Don’t miss the Sale on October 17

If you live anywhere in Colorado, you won’t want to miss the annual Mennonite Relief Sale.  It’s a one-of-a-kind event, a great combination of good food, beautiful quilts, lively auction, talented musicians, all for a good cause.  The proceeds go to support Mennonite Central Committee, which is heavily involved in relief efforts and peacemaking around the world.

This year’s 2009 Relief Sale will be held in Rocky Ford, CO, on October 16-17.  Get the details at the Relief Sale’s website. I hope to see you there!

Green Drinks ~ Pueblo Style

Well, first of all, I don’t think it’s so much about Drinks as it is about Green.  The idea is to begin discussing, contemplating and networking for the cause of sustainability.  So the point of this monthly get-together is definitely Green, for the purpose of creating positive Green changes in Pueblo.

To be honest, I wish I knew more about Green Drinks Pueblo Style.  I showed up for the July meeting at the end of a day when I had not been feeling well.  I had to leave fairly early.  But I did get to chat with some folks, and I came away impressed with their sincerity and enthusiasm.  Pueblo may not seem like much of a “Green” city, but with these folks’ energy it surely will become a more sustainable community.

There’s a Green Drinks Pueblo Style this coming Tuesday, September 29, 2009.  There are drink and dinner specials offered by the hosts at The Cock N Bull, 325 S. Union Avenue in Pueblo.  Tisha Casida will talk about supporting small businesses, our local economies in southern Colorado, and the opportunities that we have to build a sustainable economy by creating networks of people, businesses and information.  Then the last get-together for this year will be October 27, 2009.

Sound interesting?  It is!  You can contact Dena at (719) 369-9087, or pick up a copy of That’s Natural! magazine in Pueblo.  And there’s a website for Green Drinks, too.

Ridin’ Fence ~~ Community (the cat & the hen)

One of my half-bantam hens decided she was going to incubate her eggs in the milk barn but the milk barn is dedicated cat territory. I moved her to the brood house.

She abandoned the nest and returned to the milk barn and started another clutch. I moved her to a corner of the chicken house. She abandoned that nest and started another clutch. I shifted her to a kidding shed. She left that nest too and returned to the barn. I gathered her eggs for a couple weeks, hoping to encourage her to find a better place to set. Nothing doing. She was going to incubate her eggs right there in the corner of the milk barn under the edge of a roll of used carpet destined to be next winter’s door coverings.

“You loony hen, the cats are going to eat all your chicks,” I told her.

She wasn‘t listening. Her wings and beak had educated many a cat and she figured the barn was the best place for her nest. After the raccoon raid, I decided maybe I was the loony one. That rotten raccoon killed several of my setting hens and ate all their eggs, but it never did find her tucked away under a corner of used carpet that will be next winter’s barn insulation.

One day when I was checking on the grumpy little hen, I discovered that one of the young barn cats had delivered five kittens within eighteen inches of the hen’s nest.

“That was dumb,” I told the cat. “That hen will kill your kittens and eat them. I‘ve seen her kill and eat mice and your kittens are about that size.”

Momma cat wasn‘t listening. She was purring away, feeding her brood of black-and-white carnivores under the edge of the same piece of carpet hiding the hen.

Ah, it’ll be okay, I decided. She’ll move them in a few days. Long before the chicks hatch and that hungry hen comes off her nest.

I was partially right. When the kittens started opening their eyes, momma cat moved them three feet to the west – to the other end of the carpet.

Now that it was close to time for the chicks to be hatching, I was developing another concern. How to keep the cat from eating the chicks. A fluffy day-old chick is about two bites for a barn cat and ideal hunting practice for the now ambulatory kittens.

I checked on the hen every day, hoping to catch her with her chicks before they left the nest. I fixed a spot in the brood house with water and feed and she was going in there – like it or not.

One day it was mid afternoon before I peered through the barn window to check on the hen. Momma cat was on her side at the end of the carpet feeding her kittens, purring and kneading the air as only a happy cat can.

Momma hen had left the nest and was calling her fuzzy, fluffy, newly-hatched chicks toward the back of the barn where she was scratching in the straw.

In shocked surprise I watched as twelve chicks tumbled and bumbled their way out of the nest, across the carpet, over momma cat and her kittens, through the panel and over to momma hen.

Momma cat never moved. Not even when one of those bite-sized morsels stopped to rest on top of her, and another tumbled into the kitten pile.

Momma hen attacked me when I tried to move her chicks, so I left them. Three weeks later, they were still there. I checked daily, sometimes several times a day, just to remind myself that the world is full of wonders.

I have now seen kittens and chicks huddled together in a pile when an afternoon thunderstorm cooled the air unexpectedly. I’ve seen a lost chick follow momma cat around until momma hen came back for it. I’ve seen momma hen wade through a pile of five playful kittens and never peck a one.

I don’t know how it’s all going to turn out, but if a cat and a hen can raise their broods together, why can’t humans teach their children not to eat one another?

All rights reserved © 2008

Ridin’ Fence ~~ The great grease zirk hunt

I hate grease guns. They are a tool invented by some sadistic deity to remind me just how mechanically challenged I am.

To the males in my world, greasing equipment bearings is a chore anyone outside of diapers can do. Except me.

It is time to cut hay, and that means there is a whole line of equipment that needs field prepped. My husband handed me a grease gun and told me to use it while he and my brother slid the freshly resectioned sickle back into the swather header and timed it. I had managed to resection both cutter bars without making a blood sacrifice. I hadn’t even barked a knuckle. I guess I was feeling a little cocky because the sight of that grease gun didn’t send the usual shiver of apprehension up my spine.

I found the first three zirks on the end of the header and pumped grease in them. So far, so good. Those three bearings wouldn’t be seizing up from lack of lubrication. I had to use my hip to hold the barrel of the gun while I held the tip on the zirk with one hand and pumped with the other, but there wasn’t much grease on the barrel yet, so that went okay.

On the fourth zirk, the gun ran out of grease, so I hauled the gun into the shop and found another tube. I had the gun dismantled before I discovered it was airlocked, not greaseless. I managed to keep the majority of the grease inside. Anything over 50 percent is a majority, right?

I returned to the swather a little less confident. I was determined that this was not going to turn into some grease-based beauty treatment, but my hands were already ominously black and the gun barrel was slippery.

The next few zirks went okay; if I ignored the spreading black patches of grease on my shirt and jeans from bracing the barrel so I could pump the handle.

The header drive shafts had to be moved several times before everything lined up. All that digging round out of sight in old grease and dirt resulted in black hand prints not just on the header, but on my jeans. I also had a big smudge across my cheek and around one eye where the gnats were biting.

The zirk down next to the wheel refused grease. Not just once but repeatedly. I couldn’t actually see it refusing grease, but I could feel it every time it squished up around my fingers. I shook it off in disgust and a blob landed on my glasses. I scrubbed it off with the shoulder of my shirt.

I worked out a couple more airlocks and approached the engine compartment with trepidation.

I ducked under the frame and stood hunched under the engine looking for the zirks on the drive line. The first one was fairly cooperative. It only spit a little grease back at me, which landed on my shoe.

The second one required some impressive gymnastics to reach. The yokes were in just the right position to make me stretch my arm up into the engine and back down at an awkward angle to plug the tip in to the zirk. I couldn’t actually see the zirk, but I was right below it. I jiggled the tip to make sure it was firmly sealed on the zirk and pumped. It wasn’t firmly sealed.

My first indication that the zirk was refusing grease came in the form of a large wad landing on my forehead. I howled and tried to shake it off, but with my arm wound around the internal organs of the swather, there wasn’t much I could do. I gritted my teeth, worked the tip on, put my fingers down next to it and jiggled it around until, at last, two pumps made it into the bearing. The rest stayed on my fingers. I unwound myself and tried to flick the grease off my forehead with a finger. A grease-covered finger.

Only the crimper to go, I cajoled myself, kneeling down and digging through last year’s dust-caked grease in search of those elusive zirks.

The gnats attacked my ears and I scrubbed against the shoulders of my shirt. I knew better than to go digging after them with my fingers.

I found a couple of zirks and managed to work grease into them and, with a huge sigh of relief, crawled out from under the swather – assignment accomplished.

“I’m done!” I yelled in triumph.

“Did you get the ones on the ends of the header?” my husband asked from somewhere in the shop.

“Yeah!”

“Did you get the drive shaft?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you get the pivot on the back?” His voice was getting closer.

“Yeah.”

He came out of the shop, wiping his hands on a rag.

“Did you get the . . .” He choked, his expression a combination of shock, disgust and glee.

I frowned at him through the grease.

He tried again, “Did you get the crimper?”

“Yeah,” I growled. “But I couldn’t get the one by the tire on the other side.”

He looked at the well-smeared grease gun.

“Is there any grease left?”

I thrust the nasty thing at him. “I’m sure there is, just crawl under there and try the rear zirk on the drive shaft.”

He took it gingerly, trying to keep his hands clean.

That did it. I grabbed him in a big hug and, before he could wrench away, gave his bristly cheeks a big rub with my forehead.

“Arugh!” he squalled.

“I told you not to give her a grease gun!” my brother yelled from the depths of the shop. “She only gets about half the grease in the zirks!”

I started for the shop. I still had some grease on my hands that would contrast nicely with his clean shirt.

All rights reserved © 2008

Ridin’ Fence ~~ That, my friend, is a skunk

Lynn’s Ridin’ Fence articles just keep gettin’ better . . .

Skunks. There is just something morally reprehensible about a critter that fights with its behind. But I have to admit, it is effective.

I was rediscovering just how effective while trying to scrub enough skunk stench off the dog that we could both live with her. It really wasn’t her fault she was covered in that nasty yellow oil. She had been helping me chase a big boar skunk out of the chicken house so I could shoot it without flavoring the eggs for a month. We killed the skunk, but poor Sparky had been fired upon in the line of duty and we were both regretting it.

“You ought to bottle some of that stuff and send it to Roland,” my husband said holding his nose as he waded by my scrubbing project.

“Even if the postal service would take it, I don’t think Roland would open it,” I replied. My sinuses had shut completely down in self defense, so my voice was a bit warped.

“Ah, I bet he’d love offering people a sniff!”

I wasn’t too sure about that.

I’d met Roland when I was in Australia as an exchange student. He was 28, I was 16, and like all good Australian outdoorsmen, he wanted to know what a skunk smelled like. That request struck me dumb.

How do you describe the smell of a skunk to someone who lives on a continent where nothing defends itself with stink? Someone who has never seen that yellow mist or been forced to ride in a pickup with a dog soaked in it?

Finally, after several start-stop attempts, I said, “Mix rotten eggs and gasoline till you puke. That’s pretty close.”

From the height of his superior years, he rolled his eyes, laughed indulgently and informed me that “there’s no smell in the world that will make you puke.”

Now there was a comment I could respond to. I promptly informed him that he had never smelled a skunk and had no clue what he was talking about, so I would file that comment exactly where it belonged – in the uneducated idiot file. He chuckled politely. I offered to find one of those gag gift places that offer skunk scent in a perfume bottle, complete with atomizer on top. A mist of that and he would be heaving out his toenails, I told him. He just laughed and wandered off in search of a beer.

A few years later, he decided to pay us a visit in the United States. Being an outdoor sort, he wanted to see rural America. We arranged for him to spend a few days at my parents’ hunting and fishing and a few days with us. While we couldn’t offer him any big game, we could offer rabbits, coyotes and various varmints.

The first question he asked upon arrival at my parents’ house was “What does a skunk smell like?”

I was able to see the dumbfounded look from the other end as my brothers and father struggled to find a good answer to that question. Mom was smarter, she avoided the conversation.

My brother had hit a skunk with his pickup a few weeks before and there was still a faint, lingering aroma hovering about the right front corner.

“That’s a skunk,” my brother informed him.

Roland bent over and made sniffing noises around the bumper. “That smells like a boar fox, only a little stronger,” he said. There was a slightly superior tone in his voice.

“That’s just a whiff,” I told him.

He rolled his eyes at me, “There’s no smell in the world that will make you puke.”

The whole family chimed in with a chorus of “You ain’t never smelled a skunk,” but he wasn’t fazed.

A few days later, we drove by a dead skunk on the side of the road and Roland hurried to crank his window down. “Boy, that’s bad,” he said.

“That’s just a whiff,” I assured him.

He rolled his eyes at me.

A few days after that, the guys were out hunting rabbits after dark. As luck, fortune, or whatever would have it, they ran across a skunk. Any skunk within a mile of a chicken house is fair game, so my brother launched a .270 round that hit it in the behind.

My brother, being the sort of guy he is, wanted to make absolutely sure it wouldn’t be eating any more chickens. He drove up to it, cranked his window open, looked almost straight down at the carcass and said, “Yup, it’s dead.”

. . . . . . . . .

When the hunting crew arrived back at the house, my brother walked in grinning like a Cheshire cat and breathing out of his mouth. He has shot so many skunks that when his nose catches the merest whiff, it shuts down immediately. My husband followed him in, looking a bit green around the gills, but there was a triumphant gleam in his eye.

Poor Roland staggered in behind them, his skin the color of split-pea soup. He weaved his way across the living room and down the hall to the bathroom without a word.

I turned wide eyes on my brother.

“We found a skunk,” he said.

“He shot it,” my husband added.

“Had to make sure it was dead,” my brother continued.

My husband reopened the outside door and positioned the fan to circulate untainted air. “Blew it apart. Didn’t know if I was going to get out of the truck fast enough to let Roland out of the middle,” he finished.

An hour or so later, Roland reemerged from the bathroom, still green and still weaving. There was desperation in his voice. “I took a shower. I brushed my teeth. I snorted water. I can still smell it!” he wailed.

“That, Roland, was a skunk,” I told him.

Despite my offer to dispose of his clothes, or at least wash them for him, he carefully sealed them in a plastic bag and packed them in the bottom of his suitcase. Upon arrival back in Australia, he discovered just how vicious skunk spray is. The insidious chemical cocktail had contaminated his entire suitcase. He didn’t even offer his curious younger brother a whiff. He just tossed the whole thing. Store-bought souvenirs and all.

His baffled younger brother has informed me that Roland lives in chronic fear of a perfume bottle arriving from America. Maybe some day I’ll send him one.

All rights reserved © 2008

Ridin’ Fence ~~ Ten pounds of cowdog

Another classic Ridin’ Fence by Lynn Allen

Jesse was always the fastidious type. Very concerned about his cowboy image, he trimmed his mustache one whisker at a time to make sure it was just right.

He carried an extra pressed shirt hanging in the back window of his pickup so that if he had to make an emergency trip to town, he had a clean, wrinkle-free western shirt and matching gladrag to put on. He only drove pickups and only wore boots.

He had several different western hats but no caps. Caps were for farmers and he was a rancher. I think he even got married in Levi’s. He didn’t want to risk anyone thinking he wasn’t a real cowboy.

His cowboy image wasn’t quite as important to his wife. In fact, revenge from the female side of the household always seemed to include a poke at Jesse’s image.

She inherited a Cadillac from her aunt.

Cowboys don’t drive Cadillacs.

That was okay, he could ride in the passenger seat.

It was three years before he rode in that car – and only then because his pickup broke down and she came to get him in the car. I think it was the air conditioner that won him over. Bonnie always insisted it was the leather seats designed to be sat in by humans.

Then one day she came home with a poodle – a fluffy little white one that weighed about ten pounds.

To go with the car, she said.

Absolutely NOT! he said.

I would have loved to hear that conversation, but all I got to witness were the glowers Jesse shot at that fluffy little dog.

Just to twist the knife, she kept the little dog groomed. Not with a standard poodle clip, but she did have red toe nails and ribbons in her ears.

Candi was a rescue from a puppy mill. Surprisingly intelligent, and excited by her new rural world, she tagged along behind Jesse’s blue heeler, much to Jesse’s disgust. With her short legs, she couldn’t travel across the big pastures so she rode in a saddlebag on the back of Bonnie’s horse. If the heeler yapped or she heard Jesse whistle a command, that perfectly groomed little white head crowned with red ribbons, popped out of the saddlebag. If the situation looked interesting, she would yip for Bonnie to put her down so she could streak off after the heeler.

If the cows didn’t pay much attention to her, it wasn’t because she didn’t try. Her teeth just weren’t big enough to go through cowhide. She couldn’t move cows, so she started concentrating on the calves.

She learned to slip in and move the calf while the heeler moved the cow.

Poor Jesse. His heeler’s working partner was a poodle and they made a surprising effective team. Despite the ribbons.

Candi loved her new life, all but Jesse. His disapproval kept her head and tail down.

I hadn’t seen Jesse and Bonnie for awhile, then one day I ran into Jesse on the road between headquarters and the calving pasture. He was obviously headed to feed, and there on the seat was Candi. Complete with bows and painted toenails.

I kinda grinned and commented on his well-dressed passenger.

He looked a bit sheepish, but his voice was firm.

“Yeah, Bonnie had to go be with her dad for a couple weeks, and I had to keep Candi. Took her with me a couple days, and you won’t believe what she does!”

“What?” I asked “Keep the seat warm?”

“You just get in here and see!” he defended, calling Candi over beside him with a hand gesture.

This I had to see. Jesse defending a poodle?

I parked my pickup on a pasture access trail and climbed in.

When I opened the gate to the calving pasture, Candi bounced out of the pickup and before I could grab her, disappeared into the chollo.

As I opened my mouth to call her back, Jesse interrupted me. “Get in here, she’ll be all right.”

We bounced across the pasture to the feed grounds and he scattered cake. We counted cows and looked for sick calves. Then we unloaded a round bale of hay on the hillside where it would roll down and come apart. He didn’t seem too worried about the cow missing from the bunch, or the one that had obviously calved within the last day or so but had come to feed alone.

When the cows were fed, he parked the pickup on the hillside, shut it off and rolled down his window. The March wind whistled through the cab. He talked a bit about the quality of the calves the new bull was producing while I clamped my teeth shut so they wouldn’t chatter and quietly turned blue.

Then from the distance came a YAP! It was tiny and a long way off, but it was Candi’s yap. A few seconds later I heard it again. A dog calling for help. Alarmed I whipped my head around to look at Jesse who was calmly surveying the pasture. Finally, he started the engine and headed in the direction of the yap.

We finally found her. She was standing about fifty feet from a bunch of scruffy little trees clogged with river trash. She saw the pickup, yapped again and turned to stare intently at the trees. She turned her head back toward the pickup, then back to the trees, ribbons fluttering as her ears swung out.

Jesse stopped and climbed out. Candi ran to meet him, made sure he got the message that something important was in the trees and then took off down the draw. Jesse walked over to the trees and carefully worked his way through the deadfall.

“Bring me that 216 tag and the tagger!” he called.

Among the trees, huddled down out of the wind and carefully hidden from predators and humans, was a new calf.

As we checked the calf over, again I heard Candi yap. Just a single bark. A few seconds later, I heard it again.

“She’s found another one,” he said returning to the pickup.

And she had. The missing cow was standing over a new calf that wasn’t in any hurry to get up. Candi, standing far enough away she didn’t disturb the cow, was sending up the signal to Jesse.

“She do this all the time?” I asked, eyebrows arched.

“Every morning and every evening.” He looked at me smugly. “I used to spend hours out here trying to find stashed calves. She finds them in minutes. And she never even gets them up, just barks to let me know where they are.”

He stepped out of the pickup and called her. She came bounding out from behind the chollo separating her from the cow and ran up his coveralls into his arms. She washed his face and he tossed her through the window onto the seat. She was shivering with cold, but so obviously happy I had to smile with her.

Jesse didn’t even notice the fuzzy hair, ribbons and painted toenails any more. And that was obviously the way Candi liked it.

“You know, poodles were originally bred for stock guardians and hunting dogs,” I said as we rattled back across the pasture.

“That’s not a poodle,” he said, reaching over and ruffling Candi’s ears. “That’s a cowdog.”

Candi squirmed with joy and snuggled under his arm, eyes fixed adoringly on his face.

After that, I never saw the feed pickup without Candi. Jesse went so far as to carry her around rodeos occasionally, even if her red ribbons clashed with his shirt.

All rights reserved © 2008

Ridin’ Fence ~~ Mules

I have to admit to my friend who loves mules, that I am actually beginning to like that silly mule. I’m not sure she’ll ever be useful, but no critter has forced me to think faster or made me laugh harder. And I have never seen a critter with a more theatrical bent in my whole life, not even that goofy Arabian.

We knew irrigating water was coming, but as usual, we weren’t really paying attention. Too many other things were on the agenda, and the ditches weren’t in shape to run water.

Then came the announcement – water Sunday evening. With no real moisture since last August, Spring green up depends on irrigation water. Skipping a run was not an option. And to add an element of urgency, I wasn’t home Saturday, so that left Sunday afternoon to clean out the ditches, find and repair dams, finish furrowing fields, lay out gated-pipe and all those little goodies.

My husband got the tractor, skid steer and loader bucket. I got the shovel. It was a long afternoon, but by six, we were ready – kind of.

About then the water arrived in a rush of weeds, foam, trash and muck. I raced for the corral to make sure the water gap was open and took my position on the goat bridge to make sure the weeds went under instead of taking the bridge to the neighbors.

I was settling in, pitchfork poised, when I heard the first splash. My big riding mare hadn’t waited for the main push of weeds to go through before taking her spring bath. There she was, weeds collecting on her legs, throwing water everywhere with her big feet. A happier horse couldn’t be found.

Her friend the 2-year-old mule filly, however, was in a panic. Horrified to see her buddy belly deep in muddy water being attacked by all those weeds, she danced on the side of ditch, ears hard forward, calling frantically. Isit wasn’t listening. Finally, Tilly gathered up all her courage and plunged into the flood, risking her life to lead her friend to safety. She scrambled up the far bank, eyes wide.

Isit ignored her.

Incredulous, Tilly stood a minute, collected her courage again, and plunged back in. This time she even bumped into Isit’s shoulder, desperate to get Isit out of the water. Isit bit her, hard, and continued her bath. Back on the bank, Tilly nickered and called and danced until a huge wad of weeds finally forced Isit out of the ditch. Then she planted herself between Isit and the ditch and no amount of biting from Isit could drive her away. She wasn’t risking her friend in that ditch again. Poor, dumb horse, she just wasn’t smart enough to know how dangerous water could be!

I was laughing so hard, I about fell in when the fist big branch hit the bridge I was standing on. After shoveling ditches, pushing weeds under the bridge was easy. I should have been a good neighbor and forked them out, but my back was having none of that. Eventually, there were fewer weeds, and I was able to take a break. I was picking at my hands and wondering how many days it would take for all those spring blisters to turn into summer callouses when I heard horses splashing again.

I looked over and Isit was back in the water. Tilly had apparently decided Isit wasn’t in any immediate danger because she was watching quietly, ears at attention, tense, but not stressed.

Gem, the boss, was standing in the shallows, splashing her belly. Old Beauty had been patiently waiting for the weeds to go by, and she finally decided it was time for her bath too.

Standing hipshot, and attempting to appear relaxed, Tilly watched as Beauty stepped carefully into the water and worked her way over the the main part of the ditch. For a few seconds, Beauty worked her feet in the mud, obviously testing the footing and selecting just the right spot. Then, with a happy groan, she laid down. Water swirled over her rump, back and neck, almost to her ears.

Tilly’s ears shot forward so fast they made an audible slapping sound, her eyes popped wide open and she jumped a few inches into the air. An alarmed squeak escaped as she crouched, wanting to flee, but frozen in horror as her friend drowned before her very eyes.

But then Beauty stood up, shook her mane and carefully turned around in the ditch.

Tilly started breathing again, her eyes returned to normal size, and the tension was just starting to ease out of her body when Beauty laid down to rinse the other side.

Tilly reacted again, positive her friend had been eaten by some water monster. When Beauty stood up, safe and sound and started pawing water onto her tummy, Tilly took one last overwhelmed look and turned her back on the whole situation.

She came over to me and hid her face in my body. If a mule could have sobbed, she would have.

“Poor little muley girl,” I crooned, rubbing her eyes and ears. She pressed in.

My husband arrived in time to see me comforting his distraught mule.

“What’s up with her?” he asked.

“Her friends are all drowning and she can’t do anything about it.”

He looked at me, eyebrows raised.

“Just go get me a bucket of grain so we can get the horses out of the ditch before your mule has a mental breakdown.”

He arrived with the bucket and the sound of grain in the feeder brought the whole herd out of the water. Tilly watched them all hurry, dripping, to the feed, and stopped long enough to rest her chin on my shoulder a minute.

“You’re welcome,” I said, rubbing her muzzle.

She blew in my ear and hurried off to get her share of the goodies, snuggling up as close to Isit as Isit would allow.

“What was that all about?” my husband asked. “They didn’t need any grain.”

“No, but your mule now fully believes she can come to me to get her buddies rescued. I think that’s a good trade off.”

I’m not sure he believed me, but the mule does. And that’s all that counts if I have to get on her someday.

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