Wednesday, July 9, 2008

have you ever seen?

Have you ever seen 60 horses running down the road - unbridled- unhindered by people's property lines?
I have. So has Jay.
Last night, around 7 pm, there began to be frantic calls in the radios for anyone available to come out to 9 mile between 95th and 80th Avenues to help wrangle horses. Jay and I responded. We had been ready to head home for the night, but this sounded like way more fun.
We broke a few rules and took a golf cart to make it most of the way there (it was about a mile from our office). We took the next 1/2 mile by foot only to come across the most unlikely band of warriors. Some were on foot, some were in cars, we even had one on their motorcycle.
The majority of them were quickly corralled into a church yard. The last 12 were a little tricky. Some took off another couple miles down the road. Others headed off the newly sprouted corn fields only to be followed by burly site men in pick-up trucks (property owner apologies would be issued later).
A plan was hatched. Horses are herd animals. We should just run them down 9 mile to the pasture. So with our cars, our arms, our motorcycle and with our little bit of luck we managed to get them back onto camp property. It was quite a sight to see them run by the cars that were trying to go the opposite way down the road.
But camp property wasn't good enough- we needed them to be in a fenced in pasture or we were going to be doing this again in a few minutes. So through chest high grasses we waded and continued our herding techniques (my particular favorite was the swinging of the lead rope over my head).
Finally, the horses were returned safely behind the gates of their pasture. I was covered in bites and sweat and we still had to hike back to our golf-cart that we left on the side of the road.
I still had one more adventure ahead of me. Something in the grasses attacked me. I was covered in bites and I began to have a major allergic reaction. My eye (which had been bit) began to swell. I began to sneeze uncontrollably and my eyes watered like I was crying. When I went into the infirmary to get some medicine their initial response was "what happened to you?!" They pumped me full of benadryl and I was sound asleep within the hour.

2 comments:

crystal said...

need more information! Do you know what bit you? Are you still swelled up? what a crazy night!

Elizabeth Taylor said...

I have no idea what bit me.
The swelling was gone by morning. My eye was just a bit sore.