Meet Kay, the Halflinger Mule

Meet Kay the Halflinger Mule
Kay, affectionately known as Kaybo, is going on twenty-eight years old. The good news is the lifespan of a mule can be fifty or more.

I am sure most of you know what a mule is, but for those who don't, here's a little lesson. If a female horse and a male donkey get together, the offspring is a Mule.  If a male horse and a female donkey get together, the baby is called a Henny. A donkey is a donkey.
We bought Kay and her younger sister, Bec from a man in Joplin who was too old to care for them. They were twelve and thirteen. 

  

Bec who was a year young is no longer with us. She is in the great pasture in the sky. I know dogs cross the Rainbow bridge. In my heart, I don't think any type of animal is turned away and not permitted to cross.

When Kay began to look thin, we brought her out of the horse pasture and gave her free reign of the entire place  (except for the horse pasture). 
Since it is apple season and we have an orchard, we had to close the gate to it for now. She would go out and eat every apple on the ground and it wasn't beneath her to pull the ones off the low hanging branches. We were going to have to go from fattening her up to putting her on a diet.

She is both funny and a pain in the butt. Today when I tried to take her picture, she followed me so close she pushed me back to the yard.

One night I took a golf cart down the lane to get away from the light so I could watch an eclispe of the moon. 
I got out of the cart to get a better look at the sky. When you get away from the light of the house and outbuildings,  turn off the lights on the vehicle, it is pitch black. You can't see your hand in front of your face. 
I was there a few minutes when something touched my shoulder. I didn't know I could still move so fast.

It was Kaybo. She came up behind me and rested her head on my shoulder. If she had been a person I bet she would have said, whatcha doin'?

There are sheep in several of the places she can go. For the first six weeks, they ran from her. The only protection sheep have is to make a circle like a wagon train, stretch their necks to the ground and don't move. They get so close together, you couldn't put a hand between them.
 If we see that from the house, one of us runs out

to find what is causing them to be afraid. To realize how helpless they are upsets me when I see them in that position.

Thank goodness they have learned to walk around her. As with most animals, Kaybo lives for food. We keep treats in the golf carts and tractors for the horses and donkeys. Kaybo knows where every can is stored in every machine. If you don't give her one, she will get her own. 

 Come back and visit me again. Lot's of things happen on a farm.

A Day on the Mountain

A Day on the Mountain.

I bowed my head and kept walking. When the sound in my ears became deafening, I stopped and leaned against a tree so as not to fall back down the steep mountain. When the sound of beating drums softened like they were moving further away from me, I started walking again. I took a second to glance back the way I'd come. It was nearly straight up. The walk was treacherous, but it seemed like such a good idea when I began.

It was another one of those things I felt I must do to cleanse my soul so I could go on to next part of my life. The part after marriage. Is a marriage lasting twenty-five years, before it breaks up, considered a failure. I felt it was. I had mothered two wonderful girls, raised them and got them through college before I left. The drums were getting closer again now. The sound so rhythmic and loud I felt it was going to take over my body and brain. Again I stopped. And again after several minutes of leaning on the nearest tree, it was gone. Whatever was following me was unnerving, yet I wasn't afraid of it. My goal had been to write down all of the good and bad of my marriage and then climb to the top of a glacier pack in the Black Hills and bury it. Cathartic I thought.

For months before the trip I walked mile after mile up and down hills, but nothing prepared me for the high altitude of the mountains. I was making my way slowly up Lover's Loop, a five mile path to the top of the mountain and back. The day before I had walked a different walk and felt like I was in a New York subway because of all of the people I met on the way. Today I picked a more treacherous route hoping not to be in such a crowd. I had been walking for four hours and no one passed me nor did I hear anything but those drums.

So my dilemma was both good and bad. I was going to be alone to sit at the top of the glacier and read my story, and find a place to bury it for eternity. Yet the downside was if there was anything of danger up on the mountain, I was destined to meet it by myself.

I learned early in my walk that the air was thin and I would have to keep my head down to keep from becoming dizzy from the exertion of the climb. Every twenty or thirty feet was a huge pine tree. I was able to go from tree to tree to rest. As I rested I would look up and plot my course to the next tree so I could rest again. I was not yet fifty, but the thinner the air became, the older I felt.

After doing the drum, no drum thing for over an hour I realized it was my own heart beating in my ears. I should have been amused at my own deceit, yet now that I knew, I stopped at every tree to give myself the rest I needed.

So here I am, trudging up the mountain side hour after hour with my head down when I run into a tree. Oh my goodness, it wasn't a tree, it was a massive two thousand pound buffalo. He was grazing in the tree line and I hadn't seen him. I tried not to panic as I scampered back down two trees and hid behind one. Peeking around the tree, I looked at him to see how mad he was I had run into him, but he was still grazing as though he didn't know I was there. Because of his massive size, I was probably a mere gnat to him.

I stayed in my hiding place behind the study pine and watched him as he leisurely ate , making his way further and further toward the other side of the glacier until I felt safe enough to go on with my plans.

All in all, the walk up the mountain took six hours. I read my history once more and took my camping shovel out of my pack. I couldn't make a deep hole in the rocky soil, so I buried my story under a big pile of pine needles and rocks. After making the area look as natural as I could, I went on feeling lighter and happier than I had in years.

The trip down the mountain took less than and hour and I was forced to walk from side to side and tree to tree to keep from sliding down on my backside. When I got there, my friends were waiting to tell about their adventures and I felt I would never be able to admit I thought my own heart beat was made by drums or that I ran smack into the side of a buffalo. But I did tell my story and we all laughed at each others adventures.

It ended up to be quite a vacation, in more ways than one.

Random facts

This is the third day I have been inside.  Living on a 97 acre piece of land makes this a rare event.
Right now my reason for staying in is ice.  I go out in snow and rain, but ice and I do not mesh.
Cars and I have no traction on ice.

 I have been working on the edit of my novel Tattered Wings.  I love seeing it get better and better, but once in awhile, I stray.  This afternoon I strayed because of odd facts.  That's right.  Not brownies or ice cream or even a second cup of coffee, but odd facts.  Facts fascinate me.  I am always amazed to watch Jeopardy and have someone come up with an obscure fact.  I wonder how they know which star is the brightest one in the northern sky of the southern hemisphere on December 9,1918, at dusk.  Okay so maybe that wasn't the question, but it was something unknown to us normal folks.

So here I am  to entertain you will some facts not known to most of you.

1.   There are more chickens than humans on the earth.
2 . Butterflies taste through their feet.
3 . Lightening strikes the earth 8 million times a day.
4.   Dolphins sleep with their eyes open.
5 .Only 11 % of the earth is used for crops.
6 . Your heart beats about 100000 times a day.
7.  A flea can jump 130 times his size.  If you could do that you could jump over the St. Louis arch.
7.  China has more pigs than the rest of the world combined.
8 .97 % of the world's water in non-drinkable
9.  70% of the world's red meat eaters eat goat
10  Silent and listen have the exact letters.
11.  The blue whale is the largest mammal on earth.
12.  Bull frogs never sleep
13.  We don't sneeze when we are sleeping\
14.   We use the equivalent of two liters of oil per person in the world, per day.
15.  Only 20 % of the people in the world have a passport.

Okay, I am ready to go back to editing.  I hope you are all enjoying some good weather and are not stuck in the house as I am.  Life is good.