Sunday, May 06, 2007, 05:48
Out of the East
The wind has been blowing out of the east for almost a week now. In "normal" years, the wind would blow out of the east for a few days, and then we'd get a fairly decent rain. But not this year.
The wind has blown out of the east for days several times this spring. And each time it has been the same -- only a scanty amount of rain.
Oh, sure, it rained Friday -- not quite 2/10 of an inch. And the wind is still blowing strong out of the east.
Friday afternoon, we drove over to the eastern part of the state. I was signed up to be a vendor at an arts and crafts fair in Shawano, not far from Randy's mom and dad's house. On the way there, I noticed that many marshy areas seemed to be rather dry. And I noticed that the Wolf River was down about a foot. I heard on the news last week that Lake Superior was down by 18 inches.
When the rivers -- and one of the Great Lakes -- is down, it's dry. I'm not sure how much rain it will take to fill up the marshes and rivers and Lake Superior. But I know we'll need to get more than 2/10 or 3/10 of an inch at a time.
As for the arts and crafts sale, there were not many people who came through. But I did all right anyway. I sold a dozen books. And we got to have a brief visit with Randy's folks. So it all worked out pretty well, even though gasoline is over $3 a gallon.
Over $3 a gallon. I wouldn't be surprised if it was $4 a gallon in the not-too-distant future. The oil companies get richer, and the rest of us get poorer. Then again, isn't that supposed to be our purpose in life? To make the oil companies richer?
Right.
Actually, I think I stand a better chance of seeing rain out of an east wind than I do of seeing gas prices go down to their pre-Hurricane Katrina levels. . .
LeAnn R. Ralph
Thursday, May 03, 2007, 14:18
I'm On the Injured List
I am feeling sorry for myself. I'm injured. Of course, if I would stop dwelling on it, then maybe my finger wouldn't bother me as much.
It all started Wednesday evening when Randy came home from work, and I decided we ought to vaccinate the horses for West Nile and the four-in-one vaccination that covers, among other things, tetanus and encephalitis. I got the vaccinations at the vet clinic last week, and it's a good idea to have the West Nile done before the mosquitoes get bad.
I figured we ought to start with the old Morgan-Arab cross. He's always so difficult about everything that it's good to get him out of the way first.
Right.
I never even got a halter on him.
I made it as far as putting the lead rope around his neck so I could, with any luck, hold onto him long enough to put the halter on when he bolted. He turned with such force that the lead rope wrapped around the end of the ring finger on my right hand. The pain was so instantly intense and excruciating that I wouldn't have been surprised to see that the end of my finger had been torn off.
But no, the finger was still there, and as I looked at it, I couldn't really find much wrong with it. So, I headed out to the pasture to see if I could coax the horse into coming close enough to eat the pail of grass I had picked for him.
He was having none of it.
I chased him around for a little while -- until I looked at my hand and noticed blood dripping from the end of my fourth finger.
"I won't catch him now," I said to Randy. "Not when my hand smells like blood."
I held up my hand so Randy could see it. "Nice. Way to go Kajun," he said.
I went to the house for a Band-aid and antibiotic ointment, and while I was in the bathroom doctoring my finger, I came to another decision. We were going to forget about vaccinating Kajun for the time being. Now that he was totally suspicious of me and my motives, I didn't stand much chance of getting a halter on him. And even if I did get a halter on him, I probably wouldn't be able to hold onto him.
When I went back outside, I told Randy about my decision, and we headed off to Isabelle's pasture.
In the past, I have had great success with letting the horses eat some grass from a pail to distract them while Randy pops them with the shot. There was no question that I would get a halter on Isabelle. She doesn't mind when I put the halter on her, and in fact, she acts like she enjoys the attention. Randy got the first vaccination into Isabelle's rear end with relatively little trouble. Unfortunately, by then she was wise to us and nervous about the next one.
Poor Isabelle. I think Randy ended up sticking her four times before he finally got the vaccination in where it belonged.
In the meantime, I did a lot of planting my feet and spinning as Isabelle made tight circles around me. This was advice from the man who trims my horses' feet as a way to get a horse to calm down. Eventually, he said, they get tired of going in tight circles and they stop. He said you get a little dizzy doing it, but the horse eventually calms down
And he was right. Isabelle did get tired of making circles. And I did end up dizzy. She still didn't trust Randy, though, and when he stuck her for the fourth time, she took off.
Fortunately I had a firm grip on the halter. But as Isabelle was spinning around me, the needle and syringe were bouncing around in the muscles of her rump.
Finally she stopped, Randy swooped in, depressed the plunger and yanked out the syringe.
And the vaccinations were done!
Now all we had to do was "make up" with Isabelle. At first, she was wary of us patting her rear end. Personally, I don't blame her a bit. If someone had stuck me with a needle four times, I'd be wary, too. After about 10 minutes, though, we could both slap her rump, and she stood there with her eyes half closed, as if she didn't have a care in the world. In fact, now that I think about it, we should both make a point of patting her rump after this, especially in the evening when both of us are there so that the idea of two of us approaching her does not make her feel alarmed.
"Well," I said as we left Isabelle's pasture, "that wasn't too bad."
"Not bad at all," Randy agreed.
"I'm so impressed with the way Isabelle calmed down," I said. "If she really wanted to take off, there's no way I could hold onto her. If she really wanted to get away, she could be in the next county by now."
"Yes," Randy said, "she was a very good girl."
Actually, I'm just grateful Isabelle wasn't more trouble than that. I'm not sure how many more times I could have stood bumping my finger. Just thinking about it now makes it throb.
Oh, yes, that's right.
I'm not supposed to think about it. . .
LeAnn R. Ralph