Well, hell’s bells
– another Monday survived at Linda’s Last Chance Ranch.
Well, hell’s bells – another Monday survived at Linda’s Last Chance Ranch. From sunup to sundown, not a dull moment as the day started with yet another great escape: My “wonder horse” Junior finally figured out how to work his nose and lips like a thumb and forefinger and unlocked the gate to freedom.
Junior’s co-conspirator and our yard guest, Gus, the neighbor’s donkey, made their way down Anzar Road, tasting that greener grass on the other side of the fence and paying absolutely no attention to the morning rush hour traffic. Fortunately, we live in the country where even morning commuters are accustomed to meeting livestock in the road.
The only driver in a real hurry was one young girl clocking about 65 mph as though she was already on the freeway. She was young enough to have no idea what it might be like to hit a 1,200-pound horse in a canvas-covered Jeep, how it would ruin her day and total her vehicle. But my significant other tried to inform her of her folly as he shouted these words of wisdom: “Slow down, you moron!”
After 20 minutes of chasing the two escapees, first up and then down Anzar Road, Junior decided it was time to go home and stood atop a neighbor’s driveway, waiting for us to catch up. As I put the halter on
him, my significant other accused me of sneaking out of bed while he was still asleep and letting the animals out simply because he had not been keeping up with his new year’s resolution to get more exercise.
In the course of the chase, a young woman (in Jim’s case, anyone under 40 is young) stopped as he was running after our horse and donkey. Jim knew that once they started running, he could never catch them, let alone get ahead of them on foot.
He asked the young woman if she would drive him past the animals. “They don’t run from cars,” he told her, which is “horse sense.” So the women unlocked her door, he got in and she drove ahead of the animals and let him out so he could turn them back around.
After things calmed down, he looked at me and said “Without that woman’s help, we’d still be chasing that horse and God knows one of them could be killed by some speeding driver.”
When the woman let my Jim Dandy out, he thanked her very, very much for her help and curbed his fatherly instinct from shouting at her for letting a stranger in her car.
“I’m so very grateful she gave me a ride, but she shouldn’t have let me into her car like that,” he said. “I could have been a kidnapper.”
“Yes, dear,” I replied. “You look very threatening in your PJs and slippers.”
And that was just Monday morning. As we were preparing dinner that evening, Yvonne, our substitute mail lady, pulled into our driveway and told us that our cows were out in the road. But they weren’t our cows.
Now I know why the guy that lived in our house before us had a large sign on his front door proclaiming, “I DON’T OWN ANY COWS!”
Our home is right next to and right across the road from cattle-grazing land, so it’s only natural that people make the mistake of assuming the cows are ours. And here’s one of the things I really like about living in Aromas: Everyone up and down Anzar Road always responds as though any animals loose on the road were theirs.
All of our neighbors have come to the aid of our animals when they have gotten loose and we’ve always run to help corral whoever’s animals got loose. In Aromas, people ask whose animals they are only after they’ve been safely taken off the highway.
So a special thanks to the young woman who helped Jim turn the animals back so I could corral them. She was a true Aromite, a true Aromas neighbor.
