Pacing around in the lobby of the maternity ward

Beth and I moved back to the Hamster Ranch last Monday because Mama was going to let go "at any time" and we were going to take the pictures of the event.
Monday: it was hot and nothing happened.
Tuesday: it was even hotter and nothing happened.
Wednesday: things were calm (and hot) until evening and then "the storm" moved in. First the wind came. Amazing. The porch light was on and we see this fine mist blowing sideways past the door. I stuck my hand out and it didn't get wet... it was a fog of pollen. Beth stuck her head out to see where it was all coming from and instantly realized her mistake. Her eyeball was instantly coated with pollen and she bent over and started blinking and rubbing her eyes frantically while I looked over my shoulders to make sure that there wasn't a herd of bees zooming in for a free meal.

Then the lightning came. Oh yeah, then there was the gush of water. This wasn't just "precipitation", this was a wall of water that would have set off alarms if we were sitting in a submarine at the moment. Lots and lots of water. Ooooh look, one of the guests for the B&B is coming up the driveway. I hope she can find the door because I would rather not run out there.
But wait! Carl realizes that the door was open on the camper so that it could air out and Carl knows that this wind was going to rip the door right off. So he got out of bed, pulled on his pants and scurried out into the darkness.
The guest splashed through the door and dumped one load of luggage and then splashed out again, when she came back in she was still standing in the doorway marveling at the weather when out of the darkness popped Carl. An eighty year old man dressed like one of the guys from the Chippendales, barefoot, jeans, red suspenders, and absolutely no shirt. Fortunately he also forgot his glasses and hearing aids so he wasn't aware that he had popped out of nowhere and had scared our guest so badly that the storm suddenly seemed trivial. Carl wasn't aware that the person that he was stepping by on his way back to bed was somebody that didn't know him, and he really didn't care, he was going to bed. Noel told our guest Enid that "That's Carl, he lives here" and left it at that. Enid told us about how she had made it up the hill before everything had let loose and was glad to be here even with the "all male revue" part of our little B&B. I would like to note that I was wearing most of my clothes at the time. I was pretty proud of that.

We all settled down to watch a movie and the lightning was still zapping around. I spent a lot of time out in the glass room enjoying the light show, and Beth was in her room reading. I came in to sit back down on the couch and Barnum had taken my spot (Barnum is the farm manager disguised as an orange tabby), well I was bending over to negotiate with the cat when lightning hit a tree right behind the house. Barnum's eyes opened up to the size of.... wait a minute... did I already write about this? wait here, I've got to check something...
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OK, I'm back, Yep! I had already written about the lightning strike. Sorry. Well anyhoo, I hadn't told you about Carl the male dancer or Enid, so there you go.
Anyhow, as I was saying, Leslie was on her way with proper eatin' supplies and we partook (which is the past tense of partaken) of strawberry shortcake ice cream and anything else that we could shovel in. After a lot of chatting tweaked the lighting for the Barn-O-Cam so Noel would have a good view of the Mother to be if things started to happen.
Leslie, Enid, Noel, Beth and I all went to bed. Carl had been sleeping a while and Barnum wasn't going to be sleeping for quite a while if his wide eyes were any indication.

Ten minutes after we were in bed Noel let out the alarm. "It's happening, lets go!"
We all jumped up and pulled on our stuff and headed out to the barn.
Mama was laying down but jumped up as soon as our large crowd stumbled into the "viewing area". We backed out of the barn and stayed as quiet as we could while we waited for Mama to feel safe enough to proceed. We slowly stepped in to sneak peeks. While Mama paced around I ran up to Noel's bedroom and turned on the VCR to record everything. When I got back down to the barn I started taking some pictures.
There was a splash that was similar to the deluge that happened earlier in the evening and we knew that her water had just broken. [insert scratch and sniff sample here]

My camera is lousy in dim light so I wasn't expecting much.

Then through the viewfinder I saw a large white egg where an egg wasn't supposed to be.
I dropped my camera to see what I had been looking at and quickly wished I hadn't.
I went out of the barn and told Beth that she should get back in there so that one of us was going to see this in all of it's grand lubricity.
Beth trotted in and I tiptoed carefully.
Mama dropped to the floor right against the wall that the camera was mounted on so that she could assure her privacy and avoid the paparazzi. Noel went in to see if she could help. Mama looked back at Noel with a "let's get this over with" look and started to push. Five seconds later Noel called for Beth to help and of course, Beth was all too glad to dive into the activity. I was attempting to take photos while Noel is barking out commands to Beth "grab there, move this, now, OK, hard, yes, perfect, wow, good" and lots of other things that just confused me.

Noel had told us that the delivery would be in the form of a hundred pound "envelope" and then when the foal is out of the envelope and then it is like somebody puffs into the the foal balloon and everything inflates and takes shape. That was a pretty good description except that the "envelope" looks more like a bright white lubricated condom that you might see on the "Paul Bunyan in Las Vegas" DVD. Noel showed no signs of queasiness while sitting on the floor next to a condom that was as big as she was and in fact she didn't notice me jump like I did when she suddenly tore into the condom right above the baby's face and she wiped the forehead and yelled out "It's a CHESTNUT!" and then happily unwrapped the rest of her present.
It had a banana shaped head with large ears and very very long legs with knobby knees.
Mama kept looking back and seemed impressed with her little wet chestnut colt.
The entire delivery took about 90 seconds. There was more wetness and grossness and wonderment in that minute and a half than I have seen in a very long time.

I have some pictures of a long awkward goofy looking creature nose to nose with mama.
Then mama stood up, the umbilical cord breaks and the goofy baby is officially on his own.
At this point we were supposed to sit back and wait for the kid to figure things out.
At this point we had NO idea that our long night was just getting started.
more later...

Dentistry on the ranch.

This one was a surprise to me (I seem to be surprised surprisingly-easy these days).

It seems that here on the Hamster Ranch on Hamster Hill in New Hamster, there is a regular need for dentistry. Hamster teeth keep growing for their entire lives and even though they spend at least 18 hours a day chewing, their molars (which are surprisingly large) don't wear evenly. There are large flat areas but the edges develop long sharp points. It isn't a problem for hamsters that live out in the wild, but these are SHOW hamsters. They do a sport called dressage. To do dressage and most other hamster sports the beasts need to wear a halter, a very snug fitting halter. Think of it like a bull dog: those jowls and cheeks (and drool) all hang out the side so that nothing gets crunched by teeth. If you take a roll of duct tape and compressed the cute-smiling-fat little face into a slim snout like a normal dog has, the bulldog would be biting his cheeks between his teeth as he attempts to take your arm off because of the nasty thing you did with the duct tape.

Well these hamsters with halters have the same problem. So it's time to call in Reeney the vet. Reeney also does teeth, so today she is Reeney the dentist.

I was NOT prepared for what was going on in the barn.

There was this contraption, the likes of which even I, Mr. Gadget himself, could not have thought up. It pries open the mouth so Reeney can reach up in there and do all kinds of things without the slightest worry about losing an arm or two.

This shiny gizmo doesn't bother the hamster because the hamster is stoned. Very stoned. Even I could ride this hamster. In fact if I could keep all of these hamsters stoned like this, I would learn to appreciate them enough to call them horses. They would actually be fun to be around instead of just being perceived by me as giant composting machines that cost a huge amount of money to operate. Horses are NOT a reasonable hobby. They consume your life. Hampsters are much easier. I am avoiding silly things in my life so this is NOT a top-notch horse farm for high-end horses, this is the Hamster Ranch on Hamster Hill in New Hamster (this is properly spoken while closing my eyes and clamping my hands over both ears). Although I have found that changing the name(s) doesn't solve the problem of chipping ice, shoveling lots-o-stuff, large hay bales, grain, wood chips, and now... dentistry. OK, back to the dentistry.

Reeney pried open the mouth with the little ratchets and put a magnetic flashlight on the upper lip of this gizmo and then she puts a little battery pack up on the nose. This gave her a nice view of an armlength of mouth. She takes a water squirter and cleans out the mouth and a pound of grass pours out on the floor. After I figure out that the green is 'food in process' instead of algae washing out of somewhere, I begin to understand one of the advantages of having a mouth (and tongue) the size of my thigh, you can eat and run, literally. These things are prey animals, so they never know when they have to run away, so they have a large mouth that they can empty out when it is convenient. They don't intend to... it's just that they really chew their food like we all are supposed to, and so even if their cheeks don't puff out, they are carrying an entire meal with them at all times, just like..., just like..., well, like a hamster.

Now if I had a mouth like that, maybe I could handle clothes shopping a little better. I could pre-load with a variety of foods and when I am standing in the smooth linoleum 'men's area' that winds through Filene's, I could just stand there and eat. (ok, back to the story)

Reeney started to grind the teeth but Lynn-Winn (the patient) gave the signal that she was not quite stoned enough. Reeney backed off, went to her truck and came back with 'the stuff' that Lynn-Winn wanted.

Five minutes later Lynn-Winn gave us the peace sign and Reeney was ready to go again. She picked up her Black & Decker power drill with a long tool mounted on it. At the end of a stainless steel shaft was a one inch diameter hood that is mounted perpendicular to the shaft. Inside the little hood is a rotating disc with diamonds that very quickly could grind through anything in it's way.

Now through this entire process Beth is grinning (she likes vet stuff), I am standing there with my camera hanging around my neck but because my jaw was hanging so far down from utter amazement, I kept getting the back of my camera wet. Noel, the co-owner of the horse, and Reeney the vet/dentist, who is also a co-owner of the horse and chattering continuously at high speed [at] each other like a couple of high-school girls. They have NOT stopped talking except when Reeney went to get more drugs (wow, it really WAS like high school, man). While Reeney's mouth was still going full speed she takes this tool that can cut through titanium, and just shoves it up this stoned horse's mouth and starts grinding away. I was squirming like crazy but Lynn-Winn was doing the equivalent of "wow, man!", it was obvious in her eyes. Reeney extracts the tool and shoves her arm up there to feel how much more there is to do, retracts the arm, inserts the tool and starts grinding, all while talking and not even taking a breath from what I could see.

It took about fifteen minutes and then after a 'rinse and spit', she loosened up the speculum and started removing the equipment.

Lynn-Winn stood in the stall and smiled while we talked about the process. This process is necessary because of the type of work that these horses do. She is asked occasionally "who do you need to do this? What do wild mustangs do?". She replies that wild mustangs do not wear halters and they probably stab their cheeks alot.

"But it's unnatural", and Reeney replies that there is nothing natural about thoroughbreds, they are a man-made creature, they don't exist in the wild, and just like most breeds of horses and dogs, they were created by man and need to be maintained my man (or in this case, Reeney).

Reeney left and I spent time recovering from the ordeal.

A couple of hours later Lynn-Winn's podiatrist, who calls himself a farrier, came and did a manicure. Everything got cleaned up. Lynn-Winn seemed to be in good spirits and didn't mind all of the attention at all. Last night Lynn-Winn, Smarty, and the grey mare all loaded up into a trailer and at this moment are cruising toward Aiken, NC, where it is warm. Nice and warm.

2008-01-28 NH, Horse Dentistry

Dentistry on the ranch.

(Click for more pictures)

Snow

Horses for Maureen

1:31pmMST / 11:31amEST

A quickie post while we have a signal.

1:15pmMST / 11:15amEST
We are driving near the Grand Tetons and we have some reception so I thought that I would type in some of the stuff that I have been writing, but now that we are parked for lunch I have changed my mind, twice.
A few minutes ago in the town of Morin, Wyoming we spotted a herd of horses. So after we took some pictures I decided to upload some horsey pictures for Maureen T.
Maureen likes horses and may feel a connection with horses in Morin Wyoming.

Then I changed my mind again.
Just as we were parking we got a call from my sister Leslie. In fact she is still on the phone with Beth.

Well the news back home is that our trusty dog Foxy died yesterday.
She was about fourteen and a half years old, which adds up to a LOT of wonderful bowls of food.

Derek got her when she was one year old. That means Derek was seven years old, I think.
I will probably write soon about some of the funny things that Foxy did.
She was a great dog. She was our last dog.
Thank you Leslie for taking such good care of her this summer.
She had some kind of heart defib problem since a few days before we sold our house, so this was not unexpected, and she was still happy and healthy until the end.

Anyhow, back to the horses for now. Here are a few pictures Maureen and when we get to Cody and have a signal I will upload a whole group of pictures just for you.

While those are uploading later this week I will be able to type some of the stuff I have been writing in my notebook.
I have been trying to avoid the rants. When i start sputtering about a subject I just wait and write later after something funny happens. My rants and raves will stay in unpublished form so that I don't alienate you guys. I have to do some research before I open my big mouth.

So we are going to Cody soon to see some rodeos and I am assuming that I will have a signal there.

Bye Foxy, have fun rootin around in that big dumpster in the sky.
I bet Derek is so glad to have his dog back.

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COMMENTS

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chemo-sabe said...
Aw shucks, print your rants (unless they're political...too much of that crapola...and you probably would alienate someone). Other than that, I can't think of anybody's rants I'd rather read!!
I'm so sorry about your pup.
love you
chemo-sabe
August 17, 2007 2:14PM

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Sherm said...
Awww damn. Little Foxmoor is no more.

No wonder Champ has been more cantankerous than usual. He’s pining for his little buddy (and whatever sympathy cheese he can weasel out of us).

Another splash on the ground for dear Foxy.

Hope yer rodeo went well. Go to the BBQ cook-off and eat plenty of hot brown stuff.

There’s someone out there (in Wyoming or an adjoining state) that has an old minuteman missile silo for a home that they have tours of occasionally. A real swords into plowshares kind o’ deal. Or swords into a really cool underground home.

I’ll look for the link but ask around, can’t be too many of them.

Fireworks were epic, so was the traffic. Wouldn't miss it for anything. Over 9000 shots.

Hugs all around. The little one adds kisses.

August 19,2007 10:01 AM

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