Uninvited Guests

Ah, country living when you have great plans for hanging bird tape, stacking lumber and chopping wood for your Wednesday evening, but instead get presented with some uninvited guests you have to entertain – or in this case herd 3 miles back to their pasture.

To be fair, these horses probably felt that they had gone home, vs escaped home. For the past many years our pasture had been rented to a neighbor to use for grazing her horses. Her heavy, frollicky horses. Many years, overgrazing and poor management have whittled our land to a nubbin that is super compacted and riddled with weeds and moss. Needless to say i’m none too friendly to any horse feet on my land, but i’m also a good neighbor.

Seriousy, stop galloping on the poor soil!

Cringe worthy. I was first and foremost concerned about the horses getting into the barn as we have taken down quite a few fences and the pasture is no longer enclosed, nor the barn protected. We have all kinds of tools and hay in there that is not for horsey mouths and feet. I was secondly concerned for the horses, galloping around piles of torn up lumber and nails from our recent big home improvement project. Not to mention rolls of fencing laying around for them to get tangled on. I grew up with horses, but haven’t been around them for quite some time and do not enjoy chasing/trying to catch them in a pasture. They’re big and heavy and run around really fast! Ha, luckily then made their way to the front lawn and got a little too close to my newly planted hedgerow, so i made my move!

It is amazing to see how much grass a horse can rip out of the ground in one bite. I’ll stick to smaller grazers for my pasture, thanks. Anyhoo – as the horses made their way closer to the yard i made my move and the chase was on! Luckily my husband had just gotten home so he and i in our coats and heavy socks began an unplanned trot/hike along the 3 miles of road to our neighbor’s pasture. Our neighbor, by the way works the night shift and would not have been home to deal with her pets until after 11. Unable to contact her other neighbor after MY other neighbor calling her at work, she was under a significant amount of stress and worry! Thank goodness the horses were mostly obliging to our whoops and stick waves, only tried one rush through the woods to double back (which my husband evaded in true Daniel Day Louis fashion crashing over the underbrush) and we managed to get them all the way to hte neighbor’s property and INTO their pasture! Woo hoo!

Horses are what happen when you’re busy making other chore plans, shall we say. It felt great to call our neighbor at work and give her the good news. She was so relieved and thankful! And here i was thinking of just chasing them off and yelling curses their way. Just goes to show: it’s always best to be a good neighbor and do the right thing, especially when it gets the giant stomping mouth beasts off your land and back safely home.

Have you ever had to deal with uninvited guests?