So I’m sitting at my computer working on eBay when I hear a knock at the door. I go down and there is a Sheriff standing there…never a good sign. I open the door and the first thing he ask is, ‘do you own a donkey’? Oh no….a loose donkey? Where is Sparky and the Tank?? I quickly scan the field and start a head count…one, two, three…where’s Sparky? Heart drop! He tells me there is a donkey running down the road, all gray, whew….mine is spotted. I still don’t see Sparky and I ask him are you sure it’s a donkey and not a horse? He assures me it’s a donkey. Another look in the field and Sparky comes into sight…double whew! I don’t see Lincoln so I ask him another stupid question (like the poor guy doesn’t know) are you sure it’s not an Alpaca…he’s all brown and stands this tall (my hand up to the top of my head)…he rolls his eyes saying he can tell a donkey from an Alpaca….I look to make sure his hand isn’t on the gun with this crazy lady asking him if he knows the difference between donkey’s, horses and Llamas’! All I know is that somebody else is chasing a large animal down the road and it is NOT one of ours! I am however, going to walk the fence just to make sure they don’t get any bright ideals in case they see a cousin running past our house!!!
Category Archives: Horses
Laci the Tank..Huodini!
We should name our big fat horse Laci…HOUDINI! I went out to the barn about an hour ago to do my ‘feed the animals without being trampled dance’! I gave Sparky her pill, then turned to give Laci her medicine and noticed she wasn’t in the barn pigging out like a good horse. Was she in the field enjoying the brown grass?? NO! She got through the fence and was in the front yard next to our 6 foot tall concrete hand, 3 feet from the road munching on the rich green grass that she isn’t suppose to be eating! Cars were slowing down with folks straining to see and pointing to the funny horse eating by a hand! I quickly grabbed her ‘leash’ and calmly walked out the gate pretending I wasn’t interested in ‘catching’ her. I slowly walked up to the naughty horse, gave her the pill mixed with delicious goat grain that no horse can resist and slipped the lead around her fury neck. I let out a huge sigh of relief! She whinnied cause she just figured out that I, the crafty human has just gained control! Woo-hoo…I win again! I do not make this stuff up! Our animals are smarter than the average bear and keep me on my toes!
And now for the rest of the story…. you’d all would be proud of me. After I got Laci back to the barn (she is currently penned up with Sparky), I walked the fence and found where she worked it loose and got out. I’m shocked, this over weight, so called ‘mini horse’ had to get down on her belly and wiggle through the bottom of the fence…Laci the mini ‘TANK’, squeezed through a small spot close to the ground! I tied the bottom of the chain link to a concrete block to hopefully keep her from pushing through again. I did it all by myself! As soon as Chad gets home he will go out-alone-in the dark-alone-to inspect or fix the now out of shape fence!
My Cat & the Possum
I went to the barn tonight to feed my starving animals (I could feel their eyes staring at the house in the dark) and I looked over at my kitty condo tree that is about 5 feet tall where I feed my kitties. I put their food up there so the chickens don’t eat it. Of course it doesn’t work, they always find the cat kibbles, the goat grain and all llama munchies…if there’s food anywhere within 10 miles, those chickens will find it! Any who….I looked over at the cat dish to see if it needs filling up from hungry hens and I notice a furry animal with its back to me, head buried deep in the yummy kitty nibbles. My first thought is…what is wrong with that cats fur, it shiny and gray? I don’t remember it being so …’different’. I go over to see the “kitty” and he turns around to glare at me with beady little eyes and a not-so-cute hiss! It’s a possum!! WHAT??!! My boy kitty is sitting up there with him like they are buddies or something! It’s a young possum and he was kinda cute, squinted eyes and all! He just sat there, with my cat looking at me, daring me to chase him away. I loudly say to boy kitty, “come on! This is why I hired you! To keep the riff raff away! Now do your job!!” He yawned! Really? Yawned?? I rolled my eyes and left. Leaving my boy kitty and his new bud sitting on top of the cat condo sharing a nice dinner. Oh brother! @_@
Honestly…after I figured out it was a possum and not a cat, I stood there scratching my head cause our boy kitty was sitting up there with him…after a greeting hiss, mr possum hung his furry head off the side with an open mouth, making his body go limp…like it was dead or something. That’s when I was trying to process it in my brain. Stupid thing just laid there for a few minutes until he figured I wasn’t going to hit him (it was really funny!). He slowly raised himself from the dead and started to eat with my cat. I tried so hard to get a picture!
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Ducks and snow
This is what I have discovered with the first real snow fall of the season….no animal will come out of the barn. They all sit or stand inside, huddled together which is an amazing feat since the horses and Dunkay don’t like each other and that the goats don’t want to be around anybody but themselves. However, our Llama Stormy, does keep up on his non-stop run or shall I say guard, along the fence to make sure the boys are not planning to ‘jump’ over to the other side where HIS girls are. The only animal I found that the snow does not bother, are the ducks who seem to enjoy the drifts, leaving behind weaved webbed tracks! Yep…them ducks are all over the yard. I found duck trails going from one side of the snow covered yard to the other! They never stop moving or quacking.
Ducks waddling down the street
Well the ducks have figured out that the puddles on the other side of the fence is wetter! The gate was open and they decided to waddle out and quack their way to a new and bigger water hole….down the street! And who gets to chase them? Yep, that’s right, Farmer Nancy! I go after ducks, they go after water. I yell at ducks to ‘come back’, they quack ‘no way’…I threaten ducks with the thoughts of replacing my Thanksgiving Turkey with duck meat, they laugh and keep going! One human, three ducks, a busy street and slowing down cars with folks shaking their heads thinking, ‘yep, there goes those wacky people again running down the street waving arms at birds and putting on a pop corn show!
Dunkay and the egg search. Nov 14th, 2013
Everyday is an Easter egg hunt for me! The hens and I play hide and seek every single day…they hide their eggs, I seek. I look under barrels, in between hay bales, behind food bins…up, over, under, behind! They lay those dang eggs in every spot imaginable except inside their cozy nesting boxes that we made special for them! I have found that I can make my body stretch and bend, using muscles I didn’t know existed and I’m really good with the full body balancing act! I also learned what the word ‘tip-toe’ means! I need to be careful because no matter how much I push away or yell….I can not get Dunkay to stop looking for the eggs with me! If I put my hand behind a straw bale, he has his nose buried deep inside sniffing out whatever he thinks I might be hiding from him. If I stand on a bucket to reach up to feel for a nest, he is right behind me nudging my butt, if I’m looking between stacked hay, he is on the other side peeking at me with one eye, which is un-nerving! I learned the hard way never to bend over in front of him or the goats, that singles ‘play time’ for them. He loves the word “NO” since that is what I say to him every time I go into the barn….he must think it is a love phrase, he seems to get excited and wants to play every time I say it!! I have 15 to 20 hens out there and I only found 4 eggs. They move their nest every time I locate where they are hiding them from me. Tomorrow Dunkay and I will search for eggs as he plays and I push him away expressing my NO affection for him!
Animal Love Song. Nov 15th 2013
My animals love me so much they are singing me a song! First Dunkay does his louder than a jet plane HEEE-HAAAAW and the goats who are standing beside him, staring at the house of course, do their high pitched BAAAAAAAA…then Dunkay hollers again, followed by a rooster. The only thing that would make this choir perfect, is if the Alpaca would do his alarm call! Now that would be farm sweet music!!! I gotta get cameras up!!
Chickens By The Road
Early morning…dogs wake me up barking, I drag my tired, half asleep bones out of the bed, go to the brick ached window, squint my now forced eyes open and what do I see? 5 or 6 chickens outside the gate standing next to the road. I throw my hand to my head releasing a loud “why me’ sigh and get dressed as fast as I my old body will let me so I can chase birds back into our yard before a car hits them. I refuse to run out there in my red furry robe with the cute puppy dogs on it, fuzzy blue slippers and glasses! I already scare the neighbors enough with my weekly tirades running down the street waving and yelling at something bigger than myself! By the time I got out there, no chickens were standing around. I look between the bushes, I go around the front yard, I look long & hard down both sides of the road nothing. Of course a jeep comes down the road and slows down, nobody knows what the crazy farmer lady is going to do next, therefore it is safer to slow down to a crawl and go around her leaving 20 feet between! I smile and wave, she looks nervous and sort of waves back, I think it was a more along the lines of telling me to stay away from the vehicle! Still no chickens. By this time every animal in the barn knows I’m up early and outside…they call to me, all of them, at once. I go to the barn and who do I see? Yep, it’s them chickens! All together looking at me with their heads cocked with a look of, ‘why are YOU up so early? you gonna feed us or what’? I had a vision flash before my eyes! I saw 5 cooked chickens stuffed and ready to eat!!
Goat In House
Today, I got home from the store and was taking my many sacks of groceries into the house when I felt a bump on my leg as a black and white furry blob brushed past me into the house. The stupid goat wanted to see my kitchen and demand food! I had to quickly put my sacks down on the floor where they don’t belong and began yelling my favorite animal word, “NO”! She turned around and blinked at me with a confused look on her face. “Helloooo….this is MY space, not yours…now, OUT”. Lucky for me, all the animals know the word OUT! She trotted past me as I held the door open with my arm out stretched pointing to the outside world. She put her head high in the air, strutted her stuff, knowing that she is the only barn animal who has successfully made it inside the humans ‘forbidden zone’.
Yep…true story.
Herding with a Jeep!!
I am now an official Jeep farmer! I came home, it was cold dark & rainy outside, I had 2 horses and a donkey in our back yard pigging away. I thought to myself, ‘man, I don’t want to get out of my warm truck and trick these animals back into the barn!’ So I chased them with my Jeep! Uh-huh, that’s right…I herded those din bats with my vehicle! I didn’t get something with 4 wheel drive for nothing you know!! Worked pretty good, the Tank actually ran, Sparky did a couple of circles around the Jeep and Dunkay bucked with his back legs! Such fun! YEEEE HAAAAW!!!!
ONLY AT ADDIE ACRES 