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Subject: Horses, Chickens and Ducks From: swong@samson.hac.com (Sue Wong) Date: 1995/05/26 Newsgroups: rec.equestrian I origionally posted this story to 2 places and I can't remember if this is the exact version I put on rec.eq before when we were talking about the strangest thing you ever dug out of your horse's foot. Anyway, back by popular demand, is the Buck and the Duck story... When I was in Grad School at Va. Tech. (Which is in Blacksburg, Va. at the top of the Blueridge Mountains), I used to keep my horse, Buck, at this ranch outside of town. There was a 20 acre pasture with a pond in it that he shared with a few other horses. All the horses drank out of the pond and on hot days they liked to stand or roll in it. Buck loved this pond, he would run into it as far as he could and swim in the parts over his head. Everyone commented how they had never seen a horse who loved water as much as he did. One day the lady that owned the place decided she needed ducks in this pond. She got a few girl ducks and a boy duck in hopes they would nest. The next spring, they did and we had these cute little yellow fuzz balls following their mother around in this pond. There were 7 little ducks so we called them Snow White and the 7 ducks. One day I got down to the barn and everyone was walking around by the pond calling "here duckie, here duckie, duckie" (which sounded really stupid), so I walked down there and found out that there were only 6 little ducks, and no one could find the seventh. We looked for a while and decided a snapping turtle got it. So, I went and caught Buck and brushed him in preperation for a ride. While I was getting ready, everyone else came in and they were talking about how bummed out they were about this duck and how we should get someone to come out and trap and shoot the snapping turtle. Just at they were talking about shooting the turtle who had killed this duck, I picked up Buck's left front foot to clean it, and here, squished into a tiny yellow ball is this smashed duck, wedged into Buck's foot, totally hidden by his shoe. You would never see it unless you picked up his foot and looked in the bottom. I immediately dropped his foot, then wished I hadn't since I did not want the duck to fall out in front of everybody. I did not want Buck to be shot. He was an agressive horse and had chased one horse through a barbed wire fence and another over a wooden oxer and into the woods, so no one liked us much anyway. I finished saddling, and refusing offers to wait a minute and have a few other people ride with me, I rode out (gingerly) and left them speculating about what had happened to the duck. I rode up on this rocky hillside trail and kicked the duck over the side. As far as I know, no one ever found out about who snuffed the duck. I really don't think he did it on purpose, although I did find a smashed frog in his foot one other time... Sue and the Buckskins (one of whom did sorta run over a toad once) Southlake, Tx |
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