Have I left you in suspense long enough? Probably too long huh? Sorry about that. Jeremiah left for Kansas City (as discussed in a previous post) and I was busy.
This may seem totally unrelated but we had 5 kids born last week to 4 different does. They are all yearlings and while not the brightest bulbs on the strings, they will get better at their mothering abilities. They will not stay back in the barn yard until their kids are a few weeks old and strong enough to make it out to the pasture and back on their own, they are too "herd bound". Which, okay fine. I go out in the evenings and count new babies in the barnyard to be sure there are 5 and if not, I walk the pasture until I find whomever is missing, usually under a cedar tree hanging out waiting to be picked up and taken back to Mom.
Here's what happens: They follow mom out to pasture, get tired, take a nap, mom wanders off with the herd forgetting she has a kid, baby wakes up, no one is around and instinct tells them to go and hide until someone or something (that doesn't want to eat them) comes a callin'. In steps me usually. For the past week I have been doing this almost nightly for 1 to all 5 of them. I'll come back to these thoughts later.
Where did I leave off? Oh yes! I left off
Both vehicles made it out onto the beach fine and just as I was getting comfortable with the idea that I could soon crawl in to bed, the tow truck driver points his truck up-bank and floors it! If you can guess the next part, I'd say you are psychic! TOW TRUCK STUCK! I think at that point I was so tired I was delusional because I started to laugh! Surely I did not just see our salvation plunge grill first into the sand and sink axle deep! No no no! I turned around and there was carnage all around. The other Chevy (the misc. people), had hooked up to Gabe's truck and while time-wise he did a little better than the tow truck driver, he managed to sink his truck in about 3 revolutions of his tires flat!
The tow truck was in front of us and it was sort of convenient how from the Escape forward we all made a nice little line from the beach to the road. -I figured if any more morons wanted to come out, we could start forming a "wagon wheel" circle, light a damn campfire and start singing "Kumbaya" and maybe, just maybe the Lord would "come by here" and save us all from ourselves!-
The tow truck tried to use his winch, with us as an anchor, to pull himself out but that did very little but sink him deeper.
Let's
original vehicle = vehicle #1
Our truck = vehicle #2
Gabe's truck= vehicle #3
Tow truck = vehicle #4
Misc. truck = vehicle #5
FIVE separate vehicles stuck in the mud including the so called "salvation"! Salvation comes in many forms however and up drives misc. vehicle #6 (another friend of Gabe's brother answering our plea for help!). It took 5 vehicles for the boys to figure out that coming out onto the bank was not the best plan of attack. (They're kinda like monkeys you know? They keep doing the same thing over and over...maybe that's the definition of insanity? Nevertheless, after 5 they finally had it figured out.) Staying up closer to the road was the best course of action.
Vehicle #6 hooked up to the tow truck's winch and the tow truck was able to winch himself out enough of his ruts but it was a back and forth effort as the boys would have to push misc. truck #6 out of the sand, then winch up tow truck, then push truck #6 out, and so it went until finally tow truck could get a little bit of a running start.
Don't think "Dukes of Hazard" won't make it into this story! The tow truck FLOORED it and catapulted himself up and over a dune and flew through the air and landed on 2 of his four tires, bounced to the opposite two and so it went for the better half of 60 feet. The kids just thought this was the best part of the night ever and laughed hysterically! We watched from a great distance back. I have to admit, I laughed too.
With two of the SIX vehicles un-stuck they could work on misc. vehicle #5. It was about 12:30 AM at this point. We figured since we were a 3.5 ton anchor, it may take a chain of trucks to get us out so we waited. Let me share some perspective though. From the road where misc. vehicle #6 was to the water's edge, it's about 500 feet! We used every bit of the tow truck's 100 foot cable, (3) 50 foot tow straps, a fire hose (don't ask me where the fire hose came from but apparently people use them for tow straps), and a 25' chain! Some of these were used all at one time to reach the farthest away vehicles, but nat any on given time everyone was walking back and forth taking off or putting on straps, chains and cables...and a fire hose. I sat in the truck
She fought it the whole way like some kinda battle worn soldier determined to stay until the bitter end. She'd come up out of the sand and then sink again and her brand new tires were so full of heavy wet clay that the new tread made no difference. She kept creeping along until finally she was up out of the muck and on to safer ground. I jumped in the front seat like a puppy ready for a ride.
Unfortunately we weren't going home just yet. Drat! Remember the branch Jeremiah was "not quite sure about"? In steps the chainsaw. I knew there was a good reason we had it and not the shovel! There was a grove of trees that a small path was made through to skirt the metal barricades at the turn about which is the reason we were down on the beach in the first place! Going out onto the bank we took the drive slower through the turn but since 5 other vehicles floored it through the sand, it made it a more like a sandbox than a packed road! I won't admit to taking out a limb or two to widen the path, suffice to say, it was miraculously a little wider.
The tow truck went through first just in case anyone else got stuck. Then Misc. truck #6. We were next and I asked Jeremiah if we'd have to floor it through like that and he said yep, pretty much, though he would try to go about it a little less dramatic. The kids were asleep and strapped in, Jeremiah floored it through fishtailing us through the path, around the corner to the turnabout and FINALLY back onto the main road but not before a low branch screeched the entire stretch of the cab and camper! Everyone else followed suit...but what about poor Escape? Unfortunately with all the cables, tow straps, chains and even the fire hose, there was no reaching it to the winch cable and the tow truck obviously got stuck going out so we had to abandon the whole reason we were out there! Not exactly what I wanted to tell our friends.
We finally got home at 2 AM but we were so far from being able to fall in to bed. Remember the "missing" goat kids? Stage left, I had worried about them all night hoping that they all were able to follow their dams back in to the barnyard and chores would be nothing more than throwing some hay, feeding the dogs, meat chickens and pigs. Alas, we were not so lucky! ONE did not come back so Jeremiah and I were out in the pastures first with the crappiest flashlight you ever saw and next with the car up and over the hills trying to position the headlights just right to shine into the cedar trees, LOST CAUSE! I abandoned the effort, hope the kid had hidden herself well and reluctantly went to bed. Not 3 hours later the sun was up enough to go back out to start looking and we looked and looked and looked for over an hour, under every trees, over ever hill and amongst the grass, even took the kid's dam out there to scream her fool head off and nothing. No kid. I was BUMMED!
I came to the realization an animal must have gotten her which would not have been difficult even with the dogs. She was tiny and foxes are fast and stealthy. They don't call them "sly" for nothing. I failed. I sat around and mopped for a while, it was getting hot but something was nagging at me to go back out and check again. The does were in the eastern pasture (what we call the oat pasture) and one of the does was screamin' for her kid to catch up and keep up when I swore I heard a tiny "maaaa" coming from the other direction. I followed the tiny "maaaa" and sure enough, pent up waaaaay underneath a cedar trees low limbs was the missing kid! HOORAY! I cried tears of joy, I just couldn't believe it. The lost was found! I scooped her up, took her to her mama where she got a nice full belly and carried her to the front yard to show her to Jeremiah who was feeling pretty rotten!
Finding that kid made it all better! I wouldn't have cared if the cars fell into the lake. Unfortunately it was pretty costly to get the Escape out, $800 later. OUCH! Though, if you ask me, I would not be surprised if they tacked on a little extra for the binder the night before even though it was the tow truck driver's fault he was stuck to begin with and thank goodness for "misc. vehicle #6" otherwise I don't know what we woulda done!
So, that's how I finished my 33rd birthday...by going against better judgment. Someday I'll put my foot down when Jeremiah even contemplates "reading the water".
No comments:
Post a Comment