The Blizzard, continued ...
At daybreak the next morning, snow like diamond dust sifted
out of the air. As the girls and I carried five-gallon buckets
of hot water out the door, I noticed the thermometer at five
below zero.
We staggered through drifts. Even between them, snow reached
the middle of our calves. The goats and horses ran over to us
and sucked up the steaming water, ears twitching at each swallow.
The kitty who had hypothermia yesterday now joined the others
in the milking room. Virginia poured warm, foaming milk into
a bowl. All the cats shared it.
I released the fence that was penning Lightfoot and Dudley
inside the barn. They galloped out, heads down, throwing rooster
tails of powder snow, bucking in mid-flight. Valerie let out
the mares and foals. They rolled in drifts, bucked in circles,
and raced after the geldings. When the Border Collies and Great
Pyrenees heard the muffled rhythm of foals' hooves, they came
tearing out of the goat barn and romped with Vashti and Xerxes.
All the chickens were alive, even those that the Collies rescued
from the snowdrift. Already I knew that some would never be the
same. Some limped on swollen toes. Others had black combs.
That afternoon, the man whom John had contacted about his
skinny horses phoned us. His wife, he said, had discovered John's
note on their gate. It had stirred up trouble with her, who,
he shouted, was angry over how he treated his horses. It was
all our fault. He said that he had lived in Belen for many years
and his horses had always survived without shelter. They didn't
need shelter, he shouted, over and over.
I tried to explain that we are two thousand feet higher than
Belen out here. Nothing between his horses and the North Pole
except barbed wire .
He said he was going to call the cops and get me arrested
for animal abuse. "I'm coming right over with a camera to
get evidence," he shouted. I hung up.
A few minutes later, he called again. John took the call and
used some, ahem, male language on him, then hung up. Our harasser
called again and again. We hung up every time. Around dinnertime,
the phone finally stopped ringing.
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