Most of the time, life on the farm is pretty quiet. We get up in the morning and open the chicken coop doors, feed the chickens, feed the dogs and sometimes give the horse and donkeys a carrot. We gaze across the field and observe placid scenes such as this one:
But don’t let the peaceful, reflective pond fool you. This is a herd of mischievous bovine.
I came home Saturday night to my family bursting to tell me about how all the big animals rebelled! 😱
My husband went down to the back half of the property, where we keep the cows, horse and donkeys together, to restring the electric wire fence. The bull has gotten out quite a bit lately and we realized that the wire was down in several places and the electricity was shorting out, so it needed to be taken down and put up again more securely.
As soon as he started to roll the wire up on the reel and it was clear that the fence was about to be removed, my husband beheld my daughter’s horse galloping toward him and increasing speed as the opening in the fence grew wider. It scared him to death and he hurried sideways to get out of her way.
Meanwhile, the 3 donkeys and all 9 of the cows made a mad dash after the horse to see what mischief they could find.
Thankfully, the property itself is fenced all the way around, so there was no danger of anyone actually escaping onto the road (at least not today. We HAVE had escapes of that nature, 😳but that’s another story.)
Since there was no danger of the animals escaping the property, it may be natural to think, what’s the big deal? They’ll just graze on a different area of pasture while the fence is fixed. Well, here’s what happened:
The first place they headed was the barn where we set the chicken feed out. They love to get into that. Since it was later in the day, most of it had already been consumed, so they moved forward to the garden!
At this point, my husband had called all the kids to come down and help round up animals. They chased the cows out of the garden before they could really do much damage. The only casualties were my poor banana trees. 😩
Last year about this time, the same banana trees were knocked down during Hurricane Irma. They came back taller and stronger than they were before that, so I have high hopes for next year!
Back to the escapees! While my husband and son rounded up the cows, the girls went after the donkeys and horse. The donkeys had also gone to the barn. I may not have mentioned before that our dog recently had puppies. 2 of them have gone to their new homes but we still have 5 of them here. We keep them in the barn at night and let them out during the day to get some sunshine and exercise.
The bad news is that donkeys are herd guards. They are especially effective at protecting herds from coyotes, which are dog-like creatures. Soo… when they saw the puppies at the barn, the male donkey started stomping his front feet trying to attack them!! 😱😱
The puppies barked and ran for their lives, but the donkey was in hot pursuit chasing them! The girls arrived just in the nick of time to chase him away!!!
Whew!
So, the donkeys and cows were corralled back into the back pasture, and the puppies were thoroughly checked over for injury and declared to be perfectly fine. But there was one more mischief maker to be retrieved.
This is Exotic, the one who led the charge to escape. My oldest daughter, in her hurry, grabbed a sparkly rope belt (that’s part of a costume) and used it to lead her wayward horse back to the correct pasture. (We thought it was incredibly ironic since we’re always telling her that she owns a unicorn rather than a horse. 😉)
Now, everyone is back in their proper place and all is right with the world.
