Madonna’s granddaughter, Josephine Carter arrived on Friday, September 12. The weddings are over; all without a hitch-then comes the honeymoon thing. My husband, Doug, and I were pet sitters while our son, Mike, and his bride, Heather, went on a two-week honeymoon. We have a very liberal definition of “pet.” We tended five cows, six chickens, two dogs and two fish tanks. There were actually only two incidents. The first occurred on the second night. Our daughter, Lesley, arrived on the farm about 9:00pm to feed her sheep. She called the house from the barn on her cell phone asking if we knew where the cows were. With great certainty, Doug replied “they’re in the barn.” And with even greater certainty, she replied, “No they’re not.” Since the cows are dark brown, have no headlights or reflective qualities or “street smarts,” this is a BIG problem. We grabbed flashlights, called neighbors and started a foot search. Do you know how quiet cows can be when they’re standing very still trying hard not to be found? Did you know that cows believe if they stand behind a tree so they can’t see you, they also believe you can’t see them? My husband is very smart – he knows whenever he’s up in the middle of the night it’s because he wants a snack and he figured the cows might be wanting snacks as well. He headed over the stonewall, down the hill and into the neighbor’s apple orchard and there they were, hiding behind the trees merrily munching away. He headed back to the barn and grabbed a pail of grain and headed back towards the cows. A few minutes later he was shaking the pail like the pied piper and heading back to the barn with the five cows following. Disaster averted! Sadly, the fish fared far worse. By the end of the two weeks, we had lost three large, expensive fish to unknown causes.
As if this were not enough torture, our daughter, Lesley, went out of town for four days and left us in charge of two dogs, one bird, a ferret, a tree frog (they each crickets – live crickets), and a flock of sheep. Nothing died. On the contrary, for the sheep it was party time. The two rams broke down the wall and got in with the five lambs in the next pen. Clearly teen pregnancy is not a funny thing, even for sheep. I thought about going to the pharmacy and asking about The Morning After Pill but couldn’t figure out how to explain that I need five of them without incriminating myself somehow. Maybe they were just having good, clean fun. We’ll know mid March. For now, I think our pet sitting days are over.
