Fire displacement

We are as back to ‘normal’ as possible with a fire still burning at the other end of the valley.  We keep a wary eye on the smoke and stay updated as best is possible.  We are thankful to be in our home, to have all the kids and animals with us as well and have appreciated your thoughts and prayers.  They are making headway on the fire and have not lost any more structures.  Even better, there have been no injuries, and as the mother of a fire-fighter, this always hits home.

Many people and even more animals have been displaced.  Driving into town, I passed a house with 3 horses in the front yard.  Yep, three horses trimming the grass and not a fence in sight.  Now, I might not have lived in the country long, but even I know, that this is not good.  No one was around but me, so I stopped to ‘help’, just as one of the horses decided to go out and stand in the road.  As horse wrangling skills go, I’m still pretty low on my learning curve.  Mostly I know to be quiet, be careful and stay away from their back-end, also I was outnumbered.  I figured, if nothing else, I could at least keep other cars from hitting them.  Luckily for me and the horses, two girls soon stopped to help, so at least we were now evenly numbered.  The girls clearly did posses the ‘wrangler’ gene, so I quickly offered to be the phone call ‘wrangler’ as one of the horses had a phone number written on their head collar.*  We horse ‘wranglers’ got the animals back into their pasture, put the fallen gate back up and I awaited their owner, as the girls went back on their way.

I was keeping an careful eye on the rickety fencing while waiting for the owner, as I knew keeping them in the pasture would be easier than getting them back in, especially by myself.  During my ‘watch’, my loving spouse texted me about ‘something’, but I explained I was ‘wrangling’ loose horses.  Knowing exactly just how much experience I really have at this, it wasn’t long before he showed up with lead ropes completely ready to assist in the operation of rescuing myself as well as the animals.  The owner had arrived by this point, and my loving spouse was so impressed with his city wife’s wrangling skills that he took me out to lunch.

*Due to the fire, people are writing their phone number on their horse’s head collar or even spray painting their phone number on the horse.  Most everyone around here will help the lost animals, but finding the owners can be tricky.  Two of the escape artists did not belong to the owner and were displaced due to the fire, which is probably why they all got out.  The owner had just put her number on her horse’s head collar.  It was a lucky thing, as this was the only way we had of contacting her.  A great idea and our two mares will now also be sporting our phone number on them, just in case.