That Facebook app “On this day…” hasn’t been happy lately. I’ve had to try to ignore the posts from this time in 2013. This morning I skipped over the sad memory from that day and landed on this from the year before. We used to have such fun and be able to laugh at the calamities.

So, from November 4, 2012 I give you the Great Pony Escape

The continuing saga of life on Jean and Billiam’s farm. With an unhappy goat constantly bleating for tree trimmings in the background, John dismantled the panels along the west side of the barn. I’d moved all the ponies to the back corral earlier. Billiam cranked up the old Ford tractor and scraped all the stalls down to dirt, then shoved dry dirt piles back into each stall. I chopped up hard packed dirt on the edges where the tractor couldn’t reach and then spread the fresh dirt around in the low spots with John helping. I scrubbed out the water buckets with steel wool while John and Billiam put the panels back up.

The little blind and deaf dog was barking incessantly inside because we were outside, the goat outside was still making our ears bleed with her incessant bleating. I got the leaf blower and blew out all the dirt and dust that had been kicked into the feed bins and Billiam and I came inside for Aleve and a NAP while John put the finishing touches on the panels. I woke up two hours later and my FIRST thought upon waking was “OMG did someone close the corral gate?? DID SOMEONE PUT THE PONIES BACK INTO THAT CORRAL BEFORE CLOSING THAT GATE?”

I grabbed shoes and went outside. All seemed normal. Goat was bleating bloody murder. Then I noticed that this time she was bleating bloody murder at a small herd of horses under the tree next to the goat pen, who were gorging themselves on dried mesquite bean pods. “John!!!!!” “JOHN!!” “SOMEBODY!!!!!!!!” I grabbed a bucket of feed and coerced Desi back into the corral but he kept following me in and out while I tried to attract the attention of the others. “JOHNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

At this point Billiam and John appeared. The village idiot horses, Blondie and her child Poppy, made a break for it and headed toward the barn. THAT gate, unfortunately was closed. They wheeled about and raced out into the open backyard. John decided to try and get them all in the corral gate, while I was trying to get them into the barn aisle. Billiam, thinking John’s plan was THE plan, herded them away from the barn at the same time I was trying to get them to go to the barn and our miscommunication caused ALL the horses but Lucy (still gorging on mesquite bean pods and not giving a hoot about the chaos around her) to charge off through the backyard and around the house into the front yard where one neighbor had JUST passed by riding his stallion and ponying another horse. After sucking all the oxygen out of the desert, I saw that he had safely crossed the dry wash and was on the opposite bank, well away from my rampaging fools.

John tried to herd them between the house and the barn but the ninnies broke out and went careening up the road and across the 5 acres between us and our nearest neighbors’ property. This caused the horses in the neighbors’ back yard to freak out which caused our horses to become even more gleeful in their wild escape. Ours were bucking, cavorting, pawing the air and having a GRAND old time, which convinced the neighbors’ horses that a pack of crazed hyenas was on the loose. The village idiot horses were the leaders in this escapade, with Desi charging along behind them egging them on by biting their butts. Blaze was running along just because she’s Blaze and is more than willing to do whatever the other horses are doing because they must know what they’re doing right?

Lucy finally looked up from her bean pod bonanza and walked over to me. I put a lead rope around her neck, kissed her forehead and led her into the barn. I sat in my wheelchair watching the rest of the hairy goofballs head off across the countryside and thought “Yanno, at this moment, if Desi weren’t among them I might just close all the gates, wave goodbye and go inside.”

John managed to turn them before they got halfway down the street and they came rampaging back around the front yard where they got side tracked by the mesquite pods on the ground by the garage. I planted myself just past the barn gate. John went around the house and surprised the ill behaved children by blocking their access back to the front yard. They stampeded toward me but between my airplane arms and the look on my face they decided to make a sliding 90 degree turn and go into the barn. I’m thinking the look on my face probably reminded them “I DO HAVE A FIRE PIT”.

We closed the gate behind them, had a chance to breathe ONE quick sigh of relief when we realized “OH hell the hay room door is open!” right about the time the village idiots and Blaze tried to cram themselves into a small hay area filled to the brim with 100 bales of hay. John managed to get the village idiots backed out, but Blaze suddenly forgot how to back out or just didn’t want to and leaped up on some of the lower bales. I was waiting for the sound of horse legs breaking as she jumped off the bales onto one of the empty pallets below, but thankfully she managed to extricate herself. She did make one feeble attempt (thank god it was feeble) to squeeze through the not even horse width space between the fence and the stacked hay, but thought better of it and scrambled over the freshly opened bale by the door, scattering it to hell and gone.
After the village idiots stopped gaily sprinting from one end of the barn aisle to the other, they were caught and everyone was locked up early for the evening.

We cooked out, sausages over the mesquite fire again, for supper. It was a peaceful evening, well, except for the little blind and deaf dog barking incessantly inside because we were outside. Billiam said “We could pretend he’s wild life.”