Reader Story of the Week: A Northwest Morning Encounter
One, Two, Three, Four, FIVE?????????
by Karyn Cowdrey
It’s a true NW morning: dark, low heavy clouds, mist wet rain/fog mixed and only about 45 degrees. I stumble out of bed an hour later than normal because I was up until 3am working on a new computer project. I have not had my morning coffee yet because I forgot to set the timer before heading for slumber the night before. In a nutshell, I’m NOT yet awake but the horses don’t care they want their breakfast, so out to the barn I stagger.
I walk in the barn and there are all three mares crammed into one stall... “Girls are weird” I mutter to myself and head into my feed room to start getting feed pans ready. I walk out and there is Emmerson’s head whinnying for his breakfast over his stall door, there are the three mares all with their heads over the one door and in the final stall is yet one more head...
WHAT????
I start to come awake a bit more and quickly do a head count, “One, two, three, four, and five.... WHAT!” “One, two, three, four, FIVE!”
OK now through my sleep deprived fog it’s registering “there are not supposed to be FIVE horses in the barn!” As my brain tries to wrap itself around this extra horse, I finally wake up enough to realize, horse number 5 isn’t even a HORSE, it’s a DEER!
Yup there was a deer in the other open stall the three girls normally share. The deer looked as shocked to find itself in the stall as I was. It stood frozen in time for what seemed like an hour but was probably less than a minute and then it spun around and bolted out the open door, across the paddock and cleared the 5.5’ fence as only a deer can do.
From the look of the deer tracks and manure I had to clean out of the stall it had been hanging out for a while. I suspect to come and eat the alfalfa stems the girls had rejected. It’s the first time I’ve ever had a deer in my barn and it definitely woke me up for the rest of the day.
The horses continued to nicker and stomp their feet in anticipation of breakfast and as if to say “What’s YOUR problem, you never see a deer before?”
by Karyn Cowdrey
It’s a true NW morning: dark, low heavy clouds, mist wet rain/fog mixed and only about 45 degrees. I stumble out of bed an hour later than normal because I was up until 3am working on a new computer project. I have not had my morning coffee yet because I forgot to set the timer before heading for slumber the night before. In a nutshell, I’m NOT yet awake but the horses don’t care they want their breakfast, so out to the barn I stagger.
I walk in the barn and there are all three mares crammed into one stall... “Girls are weird” I mutter to myself and head into my feed room to start getting feed pans ready. I walk out and there is Emmerson’s head whinnying for his breakfast over his stall door, there are the three mares all with their heads over the one door and in the final stall is yet one more head...
WHAT????
I start to come awake a bit more and quickly do a head count, “One, two, three, four, and five.... WHAT!” “One, two, three, four, FIVE!”
OK now through my sleep deprived fog it’s registering “there are not supposed to be FIVE horses in the barn!” As my brain tries to wrap itself around this extra horse, I finally wake up enough to realize, horse number 5 isn’t even a HORSE, it’s a DEER!
Yup there was a deer in the other open stall the three girls normally share. The deer looked as shocked to find itself in the stall as I was. It stood frozen in time for what seemed like an hour but was probably less than a minute and then it spun around and bolted out the open door, across the paddock and cleared the 5.5’ fence as only a deer can do.
From the look of the deer tracks and manure I had to clean out of the stall it had been hanging out for a while. I suspect to come and eat the alfalfa stems the girls had rejected. It’s the first time I’ve ever had a deer in my barn and it definitely woke me up for the rest of the day.
The horses continued to nicker and stomp their feet in anticipation of breakfast and as if to say “What’s YOUR problem, you never see a deer before?”
Labels: Reader story
posted by NWHS at
10:00 AM
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