Category: Animals

Fate slowly stalked Zip from the barn to the chair under the apple tree.  The whole time Zip ignored her.  They seem to take turns ignoring each other.

Their relationship is the opposite of Zips and Zinnia’s,  who are always playfully chasing each other and touching noses.

Zip and Bud have only met with a fence or door between them.  Bud watches Zip, the same way Zip  hunts mice and chipmunks.    I’ve seen Zip both taunt and ignore Bud.

But when Bud dug under the fence and ran through the yard, Zip disappeared into one of his many hiding places.

Where I wonder did that bee get all that pollen stuck to its legs this time of year.

But then I sneeze and rub my eye.  Allergies I’ve been saying for the past week as I pour hot water over last years dried Nettle leaves from the barnyard, into my teacup.

Still, that’s a lot of pollen that bee on Issachar’s back is carrying around.  I bet a beekeeper would know all about it.

I put hay in the feeders and sat on a rock to listen and watch.  It was a half hour before the apex of the eclipse.  It was only a partial eclipse on the farm, but I was still interested to see how the animals would react to it.

I wished Jon could have been there with me, but he had a doctors appointment right in the middle of it all.

As the light started to dim I got curious and wished I had gotten glasses to look at the sun.  Moments before the sun was brighter than it had been in months, now the world around me looked drab in comparison.  Soon I felt as if I were looking through amber colored glasses.  Everything had an unnatural tint to it.

Our shadows grew sharp edged and dark.  And I felt a chill for the first time all day.

The peepers got louder, the birds were quiet.  There were even fewer cars on the road.  Two gunshots  like celebratory fireworks, echoed from a neighbors house.

I looked for the crescent shadows, in the shadows of the trees and barn, but didn’t see any.

But the donkeys and sheep kept eating their hay.  The hens rested under the lilac bush,  Zinnia gobbled up manure, and Fate ran circles around us all.

It was Zip who behaved unusual by not coming out to be with us.  I found him in the barn, napping in his bed.

I clipped the branches and separated the five wires that had bunched together so it was once again a fence.  Then I put the cut branches in front of it all.  Just another barrier to keep the sheep and donkeys in.

I walked the rest of the fence to make sure it wasn’t falling down anywhere else.  The marsh flooded the farthest corner of the pasture, but no so much that  the dogs and I couldn’t walk though it.  Fate disappeared in the tall bushes growing on the edge of the marsh.

I picked up some pieces of rusty metal, glass and an old fence insulator that had come up from the ground in the spring melt.  The rest of the fences were fine and when I called Fate she came running to me and dropped a ball at my feet.

It was one of the balls that we through for the dogs in the pasture.  This was one that went over the fence an into the marsh and I thought was lost for good.

I threw the ball for Fate till we got into the barnyard. (Zinnia wouldn’t chase the ball because it isn’t hers) Somehow it seemed undignified for a Border Collie to be chasing a ball when there were sheep around.

After fixing the fence I moved on to the hen house.

I secured the roost that fell off yesterday using longer screws and a couple of washers.  Then I moved the latch on the gate to the barnyard down a bit.  It shifts once or twice a year.  It’s easy to adjust just a matter of moving a couple of screws.

The last thing I did was rake out the Back Porch Garden.  The leaves were still a bit frozen but the sun was so warm, it all melted quickly.  I did catch Zip peeing in my garden, but it’s not as if I didn’t expect that.  I’ll put up small metal fences to keep him and the hens out once things really start growing and I plant some seeds.

I did take some to sit with Jon the donkeys and Zip.  Fanny was laying down in the sun so I went to sit next to her.  Then Lulu came over and sat with us too.  Soon Jon joined us and then of course Zip showed up.

Zip has a wide choice of places to nap on the farm.  Today he was on the old pink Victorian chair in the barn.   We did a photo shoot.

Yesterday on my walk in the woods, I visited the old broken maple.  Half the tree came down two years ago.  The broken end supported by the trunk, the branches that used to touch the sky, resting on the earth.

Mushrooms line the bark and small animals leave their empty hickory shells at the entrance to the hollow.

Whenever I duck under the leaning branch I wonder if, just at that moment, it will fall. But I, like the dogs and other animals that travel under it, take our chances.

Yesterday, for the first time,  I thought of mouse that might live in the tree.  Of how, to it’s small body it feels like the perfect home.  Sturdy, secure, unmoving.

Yet, someday, the branch will fall.

And I thought how it’s the same with us.  That even when we plant our feet on the earth, at any moment the ground beneath us can shift, like ice melting on a late winters lake.

The life span of a mouse in the wild is between six and eighteen months.  That maple branch fell two years ago.  I wonder how many generations of mice will live in that branch before it falls one last time.