Arrivals and Departures

The population of the Hermits’ Rest is always changing. Today there’s someone new who arrived and someone old who departed. No one died, to put a spoiler in there.

Pet me once more

Dear old Granny, the skinny old mare with the inability to properly eat grass, has been sent off to hang out with Dusty and Kathleen’s other horse at the farm in Yorktown. She can wander around and squirt and quid all she wants, hang out with cows.

Enjoy your new friends!

I must admit I’ll miss her bony old self. She is awful with other horses, but she’s a real sweetie with people. I enjoyed hanging around with her, and gave her lots of love every day.

New resident

This little guy just moved into Lee’s pond. It’s one of our many baby bullfrogs from the spring mating fest.

I like my rocks.

He’s not as friendly as Granny, but he isn’t too afraid of people. Somewhere around here is a little toad, too. Lee found it in the house and put it back out.

I’m a toad.

Another new arrival is this skink. I think they are really cool. I’m not sure if we have one or multiple. I’ve spotted skinks a few times in the last couple of days.

One other visitor I have no photos of, but my guess is it’s a pocket gopher. I hadn’t seen any here, but Sara had some. I guess they hiked over here to enjoy chicken food. I blocked the holes last night, and lo and behold, there was a lot more food left this morning. I may end up just sharing my fancy chicken food with them.

Stay out of our food!

And in other chicken news, I tried letting Babette back in with the other chickens. An hour later, she was all bloody-headed again. Darn. So, she’s back in her isolation ward.

I’m a delicate flower. But at least I’m finally laying eggs regularly.

Apache has normal eyes again, and the dogs are fine. That’s it for our comings and goings.

I Have a New Shadow

A cute quick story for today. You see, Kathleen went on a quick trip, and I agreed to feed her old lady horse, Granny (formerly known as Amaretto). Granny’s teeth don’t work well anymore, so she can’t grind up grass enough to swallow it. Thus, she needs her high-calorie food twice a day!

I still eat a lot. Honest.

Granny is currently out in the yard so she can suck some grass and spit it out (it’s called quidding). It’s also because she HATES being confined to her pen and paces around nervously.

Example of quidding.

She gets darned excited when she sees a food tub, though. Yesterday, she ran up to me and I couldn’t get to her pen before she started chowing down. This morning, she followed me nicely into her pen. Since then, every time I go out, she trots up for pets, then follows me wherever I go, at a very polite distance, like a well-trained horse.

Here she comes.

She was right with me every step when I was setting up Apache’s schooling patterns, which made me laugh and laugh. I did put her in my pen while I was riding.

I won’t leave your side.

But the best thing was when I went to go back into the house. I figured she’d drop off and start grazing before I got there. But no, I heard her clip-clopping on the driveway. When I got to the front door this is what I saw.

Can I come in?

No, she could not, because part of her old lady issues includes peeing a lot, all the time. But you know what? It’s nice having her around. She can’t kick and bite the other horses this way, but she gets lots of human love on her skinny frame. We will take care of her as long as possible, too. Kathleen has her closely monitored by veterinarians.

Hey. Can I come in the tack room? My food is there.

And I’ve learned what quidding is!