the celtic cowgirl

This week has felt like a a glimpse of the future; my summer in a nut shell.

skunk hunts, riding bareback lots, stealthy birthday shopping {level: nonchalant ninja}, hot and very dry weather, trading riding lessons for Spanish - el caballo, si?{that's about as Spanish as I get right now. Impressed much? ha, no.}, extensive garden watering, and a sort of passive mood {which is not helping my word count for tlos, bristé, or two feathers very much. boo.} 

Giving my Sunday school teacher's -- saying Sunday school makes me feel about five years old. BUT my class (population: me + two teachers) is not to be confused with the youth group that goes bowling on Saturdays. No, in my class we debate Great Philosophies.... or discuss crazy relatives, depending on our energy status at 9:30am. Either makes us about 1000000x cooler than the YG, which is for public schoolers anyway....
  Ummmm.... Oh, yes. Giving my Sunday school teacher's two little girls riding lessons {read: showing them how to steer and then leading the pony around for miles -- don't feel sorry for me, it's worth it just to listen to them try and convince me that we should jump the fence to see the kitty on the other side.} in exchange for a tiny chance that one day I might actually be partially bilingual.... is cake. The kind someone else makes.

Did I ever tell you about ma' little skunk encounter? I told just about everyone else so I really don't remember. So here's if I didn't.
  I was going to feed the ponies one night about sunset, my usual time. The sky was golden and the air was soft. I was about to duck through the fence to go in the hay shed, in fact I was half way through, when I looked up and not five feet away was a Mr Skunk of Skunkly-in-the-wold.
 I paused.
 Caught between a skunk and an electric fence, what could go wrong?
Skunk toddled over to the old overturned molasses barrel under which we keep the cat food {pretty high tech security} and snuffled around several minutes in search of stray kibbles. Then it toddled off out of sight. It took a lot of summoning-of-courage for me to go in and grab an armful of hay --  I ran, people. That's how sure I was it was going to come back and bomb the place.
 That was a week ago and since then we have learned that we have a whole family living in the rock-cliffs behind our house, and our neighbor has shot two in his chicken coop. Da was there for the second shooting and we're going to have to burn his clothes, I think.
 And as if to drive home the fact that we and surrounding areas are being overrun by these stinking devils, the little cat food eating bugger came back the night before last when my brothers and I were out just hanging with the ponies. We watched him lope {they have the funniest way of running} up the road and further making his way to the cat food barrel.
  Like the War General I am, I ordered Older Brother to run and get his gun while LB and I stood watch. However, information must have been leaked for the enemy retreated behind a hay bale before Older Brother {since demoted to Private for slow running} got back with his .22 rifle. That was another thing. I wanted this thing annihilated. I wanted to see a cannon not some petty schoolboy .22.
  But it wouldn't have mattered anyway, for all the waiting in the world that skunk did not come out.
So the next night we hatched a plan. LB laid out a trail of cat food leading off into the pasture and blocked off any route to the hay bales. Then we hunkered down on the tractor tire to wait. and wait. and wait.

  Just when the last rays of the sun had faded and we were about to call it quits It Came. Bumbling up the road and down to the cat food as before. But instead of following the trail for long, it took off toward our neighbor's pasture. Tracking it far enough away from civilization so as not to disturb the country air,  Older Brother fired three rounds and the deed was done. And it 'twas to the tune of Daniel Boone that we made our way home again, knowing that one more menace was trotting around the prairies of heaven and not our backyard.

I apologize for the lack or real photos, I'm writing from my mum's laptop so random Pins it is! And thus I own none of them.

Oh, and I have a question for those of you who are readers of Bristé. It has been like pulling heath these last few days to get anywhere with part V,  so I was wondering, would you rather have two short posts within a few days of each other or a single long post that I'm not sure when it'll be finished?

Till next time,

-Gwyn