HOW THE NIGHT MOVES

I love my horses so much that sometimes I do rather foolish things just to spoil them.

Last night, I got home after sunset - in face, quite a while after sunset - so it was dark - real, real dark.

For those of you who have never lived outside of a populated area, it is rather surprising at first when you get away from city lights, streetlamps, traffic and even houses indoor lights.

We even have 'light pollution' laws in our county, restricting streetlights, flood lights (well, except for the border - they can use pretty bright lights there) and even the type of lights that we can use - they must be shaded for limited exposure.

So again - it's dark.

But as I got out of the truck, both horses were emanating their deepest, darkest mind control thoughts straight at me -- "YOU ARE A VERY VERY BAD OWNER WHO HAS FORCED FORCED FORCED HER POOR STARVING UNDERFED HORSES STARE AT THE GREEN GREEN GREEN GRASS OUTSIDE THEIR FENCE ALL DAY LONG AND COMES HOME TOO LATE TO TAKE HER HORSES OUT TO GRAZE AND YOU ARE GONNA PAY PAY PAY."

Yes, I am a weak person, and am extremely susceptible to equine mind control.

So I took both animals, each weighing over 1,000 lbs. apiece, with four feet each (that's eight total for you mathmatically-challenged out there) which are EACH approxmiately five feet across and can easily crush each and every metatarsus bone in your tiny little weak human feet - I took these beasts out IN THE COMPLETE AND TOTAL DARKNESS to graze.

Only one thing saved me... well, sort of.

It turns out that my younger horse (who is responsible for the majority of the mind controlling beams) is a little bit "scawed of the dawk" (that's Elmer Fudd talk there - did you know there is a translation site that has redneck, Swedish chef, Cockney translations?).

So I got slammed by Najale's head (enough that my upper thigh looks just like this today) as he alternated between ripping and gulping grass into his mouth but then spooking at the sound he was creating by of every single blade being crushed between his huge teeth.

So the lesson learned from all of this is 1) wearing a tin-foil helmet does deters my horses' mind-alternating thought rays, and 2) although I am not frightened by coyotes, illegal immigrants and scary things that go bump in the night close to the Mexican border, I now realize that I need to be scared of my horse eating in the dark.

"I woke last night to the sound of thunder

How far off I sat and wondered

Started humming a song from 1962

Ain't it funny how the night moves

When you just don't seem to have as much to lose..."

And I'm including this last thing just because it made me laugh.