Old Age, Frigid Temps and the Donkey Who Hates Me

Morning feeding around here is much easier than afternoon feeding for two reasons. We don't feed the old nags grain in the mornings therefore we don't have to bring some in and separate the two others so they don't fight and you can feed hay first to the sheep and then sneak in the front to feed the grain and therefore avoid being knocked around by the stampede.

The stampeding sheep don't really bother me but my Mother can't get into the middle of it. I think I mentioned once that if her center of gravity wasn't so far above her knees she wouldn't have as many problems but she ignored me.

Many times after the afternoon feeding is done I will fork the hay for the morning go around and have it all ready so the only thing that needs to be done is flipping it over the fence, putting grain through into the feeders and opening a gate which will let the one group out allowing you to sneak in and feed grain without them rushing the other gate.

IF... I do the hay part for the morning feeding AND the temperature is somewhere North of freezing (today it was a balmy 3 degrees) SOMETIMES my Mother will just go ahead and pour the grain out, open the gate and let me sleep in a bit. Those are some big IF's especially since Mom slipped over a week ago and still claims she can't hardly move.

She also claims I am evil since I make it a point of getting her to laugh and then she starts bitching about how bad it hurts. She asked me this morning when I could go down and pick up 60 square bales of hay from the neighbor and I told her anytime she wanted. Her answer was it was all up to me since I was doing the moving at which point I said "Ok tomorrow then"..... "Can't be tomorrow I got blah blah"... was her reply.

"Well I guess it's not up to me then is it?" She started laughing then threw a grain scoop at me for making her laugh.

You get the idea.

So anyway by this time the only real pain in the Butt part of morning feeding came up. Putting out the damned donkey. Mom was too stiff and cold to put the ancient animal that carried Mary to Bethlehem out. She asked me if I would do it.

Remember this Donkey hates the very thought of me. I first noticed this totally unwarranted hatred by the donkey several years ago whenever it would snow heavily, or Mom would take a trip or whatever and I had to feed her. It was like this donkey literally gets ill thinking there is going to be a change in how things are done....

I would bring her in the wrong gate...put her out the wrong gate.

I would give her the wrong grain mix.

I would not bring enough apple treats for the trip back.

I fed in the wrong order.

I would forget to have the gate opened before I took her back out and make her wait.

Besides those problems I am the guy that drives around on those loud mechanical horses and makes her move all the time and the one that has that Black canine with him when I go into the field. She hates dogs more than me.

She hates me because I associate with dogs.

Whatever the case you can just see facial expressions change on this ancient old donkey whenever she sees me. It's like her eye's narrow, her head goes down slightly and she looks at me with that expression that just screams.... Oh, It's You...grrrrrrr.

So here the donkey is bellowing her obnoxious donkey call at the top her lungs wanting out of her stall. She can't see out of it of course but she knows someone is coming so she bellows louder. I open the stall door and she's right there getting the absolute worst surprise of her life. The evil Pioneer Preppy is standing there in the doorway...

The little bitch put her head down and literally charged... if in fact a donkey that old can really charge it reminded me more of my grandmother trying to rush somewhere with her walker than an actual charge. She did her best pushing me aside maneuver and took off faster than I have ever seen that donkey move at least in the last 20 years or so. Her actual ground speed was somewhere between first gear on my lawn mower and an electric wheel chair at full throttle. Maybe 1/2 a mile per hour tops but she wasn't stopping for nothing. Not even the half dozen apple treats I had for her. 

There was no way in hell she was going to allow me, the ultimate evil one, to put that lead rope around her neck. She took off into the alfalfa field and at breakneck speed almost as fast as a box turtle took off towards town.

At this point my Mother was laughing hard and cursing me for being evil and I am thinking WTF did I do? I'm the damned victim here.

After about 15 minutes of stepping in front of the ancient donkey's escape path (with my Mother still alternating between cursing me and laughing) until she got the picture and I finally convinced her to go through the damned gate into the pasture. The only thing I can figure is she was going to try and move in with the neighbors rather than allow me (the evil one) to control her direction in anyway. She took about 10 steps passed the gate and then turned and glared at me like I had thrown a rock at her or something.

I think next time I get a rope around her neck I am going to lead her out the back gate just to piss her off more :)

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!