Another unintended consequence of letting the goats wander around the property has been that their pasture-mate, Bill the horse, developed free-range envy. The first time he joined them on their ex parte pasture outing, he pushed through an opening I had left in the gate. Pleased with himself, he began running wildly around the property, across the levy, through the front yard, and over me. Twice.
K was in the house doing laundry. Our niece and nephew were playing on the back deck when I discovered Bill's escape. A previous lesson was reiterated: yelling and whistling are difficult tasks to perform effectively while chasing down livestock.
When K finally emerged from the house, she appeared like a vision on the deck, bringing Bill to a sudden and screeching halt, and causing me to tumble over his back. Docile and contented, he stood there, sides heaving, making moony eyes at K while I snapped a halter on him and led him back to the fenced pasture.
His appetite for freedom whetted by this experience, Bill determined to devise more plans for escape. Across the next several days, I would come home from work to find him roaming freely about the property, fatted by a day of munching on overgrowth and grass, yet complacent. Hoofprints popped up in unusual places: the front porch, the gardens, by the fishing dock.
It was by using the profligate prints left in his wake that I eventually was able to discern his escape route. He was swimming around the fence enclosure for the pasture where we were using the pond to form a fourth side as a barrier.
And so I found myself one cold November morning wielding a post pounder in one hand and a come-along in the other, wrestling a roll of field fence while Bill smugly overlooked my work.
No comments:
Post a Comment