The Funny Farm

Yesterday my husband decides he is going to fix something on the pond.  I'm not sure what he is fixing, all I know is when I walked outside to check on him he was running towards me waving his hands in the air and screaming, "DON'T YOU HEAR ME TELLING YOU THERE ARE  BEES OVER HERE????  RUN!!!!"  I had assessed the situation and felt perfectly comfortable walking toward him even though he saw my advancing as lunacy.  When the two of us meet he shows me his swelling finger with a red spot.  So here is the story.....Thadd was turning some water thing and he was stung by a wood scorpion.  As he stood up in shock by what had just stung him, he stepped into a ground wasp's nest.  He heard buzzing and started running.  I arrived on the scene shortly after all of this excitement.  I return to the scene of the crime to see with my own eyes the killer scorpion and the wasp's nest. There was water flowing out of the thing he turned and he wasn't sure he wanted to visit his scorpion friend again.  He decided the scorpion probably fled to higher, drier ground and so he recapped the water pump.  He also covered the wasp's nest with dirt and sprayed wasp killer in it and so there is nothing left but a wet pile of dirt.  I had to borrow this photograph from Word Press so you have an idea of the menacing scene.

Recently the neighbors have moved their tiny ponies to the pasture that sits behind my house.  We enjoy looking and occasionally feeding carrots to the tiny ponies.  They also enjoy visiting with Charles (my pony), Augusta Belle and Pip(my goats).  Two days ago after we arrived from school, tired and ready to cook dinner and go to bed, Brett comes running inside screaming, "MOM, I HEARD A BANSHEE!!!!!!"  Of course I dismiss his crazy hallucination even though he is truly frightened by the sound he just heard.  I reply, "The chickens next door are kind of loud in the evening."  If you've ever read Click, Clack, Moo or any of those fun farm books, the idea of the neighbor's chickens being loud at night is an entertaining thought. (Note:  I could not get my format to undo the quoted text blocking.)

Last night I heard these banshees.  They are in fact not chickens, nor are they banshees.  The loud, blood curdling banshee shrill is actually coming from the tiny ponies.  I'm so glad I witnessed the scream or I, too, would've run inside thinking a banshee was chasing me.  YIKES!

I think my favorite story of the week is won by my daughter.  Chloe has been feeding the animals before school and often times she does so right as the sun is coming up.  A bit  of darkness still fills some corners of the farm and the early morning can sometimes be scary, especially if you have paranoid tendencies.  Chloe is filling the pony's bucket with food when she hears the banshee scream.  In the distant field she sees a dark figure creeping along the grass.  She grabs a large sheath knife from the barn and sneaks out the door and screams, "YAAAAAAAAA!"  Believing she has just found the stealth mountain lion that is presumed to live in the area, she readies herself to attack and kill this beast! At around the fourth second after the scream the sun had risen high enough for her to catch a glimpse of the angry beast which was actually a tiny pony, who with all the screaming had lifted her head while still chewing.  She recalls feeling like an idiot for her over reaction.  Actually the screams had the whole field of ponies with their heads at attention and their jaws chewing the grass they were trying to enjoy before being startled by the "Mountain Lion Slayer!"

When she recapped the story for me I was laughing so hard.  She is the one that is constantly chased by raccoons and has up close and personal encounters with more wildlife than the rest of us.  I rarely believe the sightings until I go to the scene and find either animals droppings or a hole in the feed container or some sort of mischief.  Nonetheless, I am always entertained by her self named life and death situations.

I hope you enjoy daily life as much as I do as there is so much entertainment to be had even in our own backyard.  Live it!!!!!!!