A Mother's Love

Every afternoon around 2:30/3:00 Christopher leaves the barn by himself, walks past the sheep water tank, out and around the corner to the front field, gets a drink from the horse waterer and then returns to the rest of the sheep still sleeping in the barn.  

He may nose around a bit by the horse stalls, but mostly it's just to get a drink.  The water is from the same source.  The sheep tank is inside the barn, out of the sun.  The horse waterer is a smaller capacity tank and sits in full sun.  Both are cleaned regularly, but I know which one I'd drink from...and it's not the horse's water.

I drove Frankie in the arena the other day.  To get there we go through the gate at the front corner of the barn and past the horse stalls.  I leave that gate open until we drive back through when we are finished. Frankie and I drive into the barn to unhook and unharness and afterward back out front for a bath.

Along comes Christopher.  He gets a drink, sees the open gate and thinks there is no one around and decides to wander out into the yard driveway for a snack.  I started spraying Frankie down just as he got started eating and he saw us...and panicked.

"Oh no!  There's that stupid horse!  And there's water spraying everywhere!  Oh waily-waily!*"

He cried and cried and I tried to talk to him to get him to calm down and wait just a minute while I finished giving Frankie a quick bath and then could go help him find his way home, but nothing was helping.  

"Oh noooo!  Help me!" 

He was in zero danger ;-).  

"Momma!  MOMMA!  Help me, momma!"

"Hey!  Who's out here bothering my kid!"

He stopped screaming and started eating as soon as he saw her coming.

"Christopher?  You woke me up for this?"

"Well, I guess while I'm out here, is that grass any good?"

I'm not sure if Short Round would still come running if Ellie yelled for her.  I doubt I'll find out.  Ellie doesn't get herself in too many scary situations.  I bet Krista never stops taking care of Christopher and Maggie :-).

* "Oh waily-waily!" is from The Wee Free Men by Terry Prachett.  This is one of my very favorite books...in case you are looking for a really good story.  I've lost track of how many times I've listened to it.  If you like audio books, the reader is perfect!