A long walk, horses and skunks

Was yesterdays blog about change??

This morning I woke up to sunshine coming in my window so I got up and for some reason went ahead and got my jeans on instead of slumping around in my jammies. I let Odie out..he has a doggie door but in the mornings he MUST be let out the front door. I went potty and then went out to let the chickens out. (Whole other story involving skunks there, but we will get to that one in a minute).

First let me tell you about my yard. We have a lovely front yard with a covered porch and lilac bushes. The lawn goes around to the back yard on both sides of the house and we used to have a fence on both sides to keep Odie in when needed. A couple of summers ago we decided to take the fence out on the west side of the house, but left the fence on the east side.

Ok, we have the pasture fenced in with several gates, most of them big enough to drive the truck through for feed, logs, you name it. But from the east yard there is a small walk through fence for us to go through to get to the chicken barn. The fence on the east side of the yard has a walk through fence also, which this morning I opened as usual to let Odie in and out (it's too far for him to have to walk around of course).

So I go to let the chickens out and forgot to close the walk through gate to the pasture. I go in open the barn door to let the chickens into their yard and notice the horses we are boarding go by the barn and I'm thinking they want some of the grain that we give the chickens, but as I go out the door to the barn I see the Truth!

Sweet grass!! The horses have gone through the walk through fence and are gleefully grazing on the sweet green grass of our lawn. As yet they have not gone through the east gate to the front lawn so I quickly close that and offer them grain to lead them in the pasture, but N-o-o, they want grass.

I try by myself for awhile to guide them back in but I also know that Sass loves to buck and kick, so I'm a little leary of pushing from behind. I go to yell for Gary to help, he was still in bed when I went out.

And as I come back out I see a horse tail go around the back corner of the lawn heading west.

Yeap, out of the yard and down the road to see the neighbor horses and cows they go.

Let's just leave the rest of the story as a long walk down the road, which is very much like a roller coaster with lots of up's and down's which in a car has always been rather relaxing, but walking on a frosty morning leaves me huffing and puffing with frozen cheeks and ears. Luckily, one of the neighbors cows have also gotten out and the owners have successfully gotten them back in and help Gary, who whizzes by me on the 4 wheeler, get the horses back to our pasture.

Yes he offered me a ride, but I've ridden on the back of that machine before and I thought it would be better to walk thank you very much.

The neighbor offered me a ride in his truck too, but I hadn't brushed my teeth yet and I really didn't think he deserved to die from my bad morning mouth breath.

Now for the skunk story.

We had been noticing holes being dug all over in the chicken barn and coop and thought it was just the mice until we saw BIG holes and ROCKS being dug out. So we cleaned the old straw and gunk out and took down some boards and found a nest of straw, insulation, dirt and a stash of eggs. Muskrat?, Racoon?

Anyway we cleaned it all out and filled and tamped and decided to see what would happen.

Gary went out one evening to close the side yard gate and saw something small and dark scoot across the chicken yard and started to walk across the yard to see if it was a chicken in trouble and then he saw the white stripe.

So yesterday he finished cleaning out the coop and bought some mothballs and I made a broth of onions, chili powder and peppers. I poured the broth down all the holes we could find and Gary scattered moth balls all around the outside of the barn. This morning I could see the holes dug up and tiny foot prints outside the barn in the dirt.

Gone? I don't know, guess we will wait and see what tomorrow brings.