Totally Tuesday

Colder and colder it gets.......tonight on the way home I am greeted by a full, bright moon which pokes through the trees and lights up the roadway. There is a chill in the air and tonight I know it will freeze for the first time.
When I get to the barn everyone gets a hot meal of grain/beet pulp and rice bran.....it steams while I carry it by the light of the moon and out to the loafing sheds. I am strangely comforted by the slurp, slurp of the horses eating their "slop"... no one fusses while they are eating....no kicking, no squeals......just a steady slurp and an occasional bump of their feed bucket.

I pull the hose into the barn and fill some buckets with water so I can warm it tomorrow and so that the hose will not freeze. I check on the cat room to make sure it is warm enough. I insulated it the other day and I am pleased to find it toasty warm. I have a couple of cat beds and a lot of straw in their box too. They should be good to go.

There is a sign up and around the corner from the barn, just a stone's throw away from us......a neighbor pointed it out.........."COUGAR WARNING.....large cougar spotted on this road."
UMMM......."this road" is our road. YIKES. That is probably the wierd noise I heard early in the morning. I was trying to describe it...and I said it was sort of like a howl, but not quite....but it upset the horses and made the hair on my neck stand up. I thought it was a bear. It was pitch dark, about 6am and the noise came from the woods. The barn cats ran back into the barn, the horses all went on high alert and I stood there for a minute before the chicken part of my brain took over and I went in the barn. Funny how your instinct takes over....huh?

Anyway, I love wildlife and I respect it and I am not mad at the coyotes for taking my one barn cat...they have to make a living too and they don't know a cat from a rabbit....but I am not thrilled to have a cougar around. Hungry cougars will take cats, dogs, ponies, chickens.......and I worry about my mom in the yard with her little dog. I hope there is enough food around that a cougar won't see my farm as an opportunity. Maybe I am needlessly worried....maybe he or she is already gone. Maybe the cougar got the cats that I am missing?

We are behind on grooming and so Saturday will be devoted to grooming and trimming horses in the morning, then we will take Sully for a trail ride in the Banner Forest. Ryan is coming and he will go with us......and we will let him ride Sully for a while. I hope the weather will hold.

Today was gorgeous...blue sky......sun..........small breeze........I hope tomorrow will be the same.

Pony Up fortune for tomorrow:

What you constantly dwell on will arrive on your doorstep.