Friday, June 10, 2011

MAMMOTH MOVING DAY..............!!!!

Yesterday was the day..........!!  We met Tom down at the acreage the mammoths were on, & also a couple of neighbors came over to help.  They had been feeding the donkeys, & were a lot of help.


That is a lot of donkey, folks, when you're use to seeing little burros even big burros...............!!!!  Although our Jenny girl is a mammoth, she is just barely an inch over the height standard of 54 inches.  


This is Tom leading "PeeWee" down to the end where the trailer was parked.  Tom isn't very tall, but next to PeeWee he looks pretty little.  We were really surprised at how well they behaved.  We don't know if they had ever even had a halter on, let alone been led.  They were confused & not sure of what we wanted them to do, but the 1st four loaded pretty good.  


The last two not so good, they took about 2 hours, of pushing, pulling, begging, pleading, but never once kicked or tried to run us over.  



This guy was the most scared, he shook almost the whole time it took to finally get him in the trailer with the other three already loaded.  The set of his ears is "I don't know what's going on & I'm scared", poor boy. 


This was the last hold-out it took about 3 1/2 hours total to get them loaded.  The five jacks loaded in Tom's trailer, & we took Jasmine the jenny in our trailer.  


It was starting to get dark by the time we got to Tom's house & since we were already going to be REALLY" late feeding we hung around to watch them unload.  They unloaded real well for Tom, he sure seems to have a gift at working with them. 



He tied them all up as he took them out of the trailer, & once they were all out, he started untying them, & letting them loose in a large pen.  It didn't take long to find out which one was the meanie.  Actually he was after the youngest one for some reason, Tom thinks he's  just a baby only about 2 years old. The older one was after him with a vengeance & it took a few minutes to get the younger one out of that pen.  We were afraid he was going to really get hurt, as vicious as the other one was.  The other four seemed to get along OK together, so not sure what that was all about. 



This is Jasmine with a couple of Tom's mules,  they seemed to think she was pretty cute.  She didn't seem to think much of them, except to send a couple of nasty kicks their way.  That seemed to make her even more interesting....!!!!!!  Typical boys I guess.......!!!!

Got home about 9:30 PM, went out to feed & of course there wasn't a donkey in sight, not even Sha'ba.  Rang the bell & they started wandering in, slowly.  Everyone showed up except Jack the mule.  Went ahead & fed everyone else, & John went over to Burroland with his flashlight.  After what happened with Noelle this spring, we really get anxious when someone doesn't show up.  Pretty soon I saw John's flashlight coming back, came out of the feed room to ask him if he found Jack.  He had found him over in a corner way on the other side of the 20 acres, just standing there.  First thing John took his fly mask off, gave him a treat, & started walking back to the 10 acres where the pens are.  He said Jack got right up behind him, so we think he couldn't see well enough with the fly mask on to walk around.  He also doesn't hear very well, so the others might have got away from him, before he knew it.  He usually follows Rusty the other mule, so it was scary when he didn't show up with Rusty.  Whew......!!!!!  We stayed up until after 1am, so they would have time to finish eating.  Boy morning came early this morning...................!!!!  LOL 

Look what we saw in the back yard this morning...........!!!!


Last summer John's cousin Gene & his wife Bitsy worked like dogs in our backyard trying to make it look good.  When they left it looked great, & we kept it up pretty good, until the 3 degree temperatures we had this winter.  Killed just about everything they planted except this Night Blooming Cerise, not sure how it's spelled.  

We had been watching the plant over in Burroland for a couple of years & tried to protect it so the donkeys wouldn't stomp it.  So Gene & John went over there, dug it up & transplanted it in the back yard.  This bloom is the result, guess it didn't mind getting moved to a safer place.  They have such pretty blooms, but you have to catch them pretty soon after sunrise, or they just droop into a blob of nothing.  Glad we noticed it. 

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