Walking in a beehive - and too much horse stuff!

Wow, another blog entry for Tom!

While feeding the horses this morning I thought I was in a beehive, and we had a dusting of snow. Our tangerine trees are blossoming right now and the bees are swarming. The bees aren’t aggressive; you don’t even see them. The white on the ground is from the fallen blossoms. It reminds me so much of snow that I was thinking, maybe I should get out my cross country skis! Hopefully a full year of no vines, fertilizer, and some TLC will bring more fruit this year. Oh, and my latest blondes had to get in the picture, Glinda and Recona.

Marge had a tough time on Friday with the queen witch, Esmerelda. Since diesel has just jumped from $10.60BLZ ($5.30US) to $11.60BLZ ($5.80US) a gallon this week, Marge decided to ride Es to town to get some groceries. Marge got about ½ way to town and then Es decided she didn’t want to go any further. After about 40 minutes of fighting with the horse in the middle of the road (don’t worry, there probably weren’t any cars on the road at that time), Marge decided to take the saddle off the horse, stash it in the bush, turn the horse free, hope she was either hit by a truck or killed by a jaguar, and start walking home without the horse. The funny thing is, some local kids on bikes came over the hill, saw the loose horse and the gringa stalking down the road and they figured the stupid gringa couldn’t catch her horse. So they caught Es, quite easily, handed her off to Marge, and Marge couldn’t bear to tell them that she all she wanted to do was kill the damn horse.

So Marge came striding in the driveway, about an hour after she had left, pulling the wide-eyed Es behind her. Selwyn and I were working on the 1st table (mentioned in the previous blog entry). I stepped into the driveway to ask what was going on and all I got was a terse “I will explain in a little while.” So, being male, and knowing that kind of remark can only mean that if I push for more information, I may end up being dragged down the road with a halter on MY head with MY eyes bulging out, I decided to let her go and cool off a little (she didn’t appear to be hurt – Marge or the horse).

I caught up with Marge about 10 minutes later as she was stalking through the jungle near some of the still remaining jaguar cages. Marge put Es in one cage, tied to a tree, came out and declared, “There, the witch can now learn that I am the boss and she needs to rely on me for everything she gets.” Es will remain in the cage for four to five days, only seeing Marge for food and water and companionship. This is similar to when Marge’s horse Ricky in the States was very ill and Marge spent five days and nights tending to the horse to make him better. After Ricky recuperated, he was a much more manageable horse than before his illness. So, this is a “forced illness” for Es and hopefully she will get the point. Marge is “La Jeffa”, and making “The Boss” mad doesn’t get you very far in life!

By the way, this training technique is used in the States as a natural horsemanship way to get horses to start to respect humans. We have a number of friends that have used this approach in the USA and it has worked for them. We haven’t ever done it before (haven’t had to resort to it) so we will see how it works for us. In talking with Selwyn, he says they use basically the same technique down here to break some of the really stubborn horses. And Es is a really stubborn horse who has been making Marge crazy, finding a different way to resist every time one resistance problem is solved.

We will keep everyone posted on the progress.

Oh, and after putting Es in jail, Marge got in the truck to pick up her dumped tack and get the needed groceries in town. When Marge got home, she tripped on her flip flops coming up the stairs and broke half of the eggs she had just gotten in town, about 15 out of the 2 1/2 dozen in the flat. Then she let the dogs out on the steps to clean them up. I won’t mention what a bunch of raw eggs does to dogs later in the day. So, all in all, not a very good day for Marge, but she has recuperated and is back to her usual sunny self.

We did have a wonderful day today, Saturday, exploring a bit more of our property. Nothing new to report, just a good afternoon wandering around pretending we are still little kids exploring in the woods behind our house. The hills, caves, trees, and views are great to experience here. A camera doesn’t even come close to capturing the beauty of the jungle. If you want to see what we are talking about, you have to come down to experience it for yourselves.