149. Bubblewrap

It’s full-on fly season now.  Solitary horseflies as big as your thumb hover and harrass, and when they bite it feels like a bee sting and then itches for days.  Stable flies home in on the lower legs of any livestock they can find; in Gus’s case, they jockey for position wing to wing, each trying to access just enough skin to reach the superficial capillaries on his shins.  Face flies and ear gnats swarm and bite, leaving swaths of little scabs.  They all compete with deer flies, mosquitoes, no-see-ums of various stripes, and the various truly evil tormentors who specialize in attacking eyes, or genitalia, or wounds . . .

Nevertheless, it’s good for Gus’s brain and body to be turned out with his pasturemate Bobby, and with a little hillside of grass to nibble, and with the smells and sights and sounds of the farm to monitor.  Since spring, when the little ear-biters hatch, we’ve turned him out with a flymask that covers his head in a stiff nylon mesh to allow vision for him but no entry for flies.  Around the summer solstice, when the stable flies arrived, we added fly socks, also made of stiff mesh that protects his lower legs.  And now the variety and numbers of pests are so high that he goes out wrapped in full-body armor.  

As warm weather approached, Sandy — a seamstress as well as horsewoman and infinitely catholic factotum — carefully tucked and tailored a horse-sized fly sheet to fit Gus’s donkey torso.  The sides hang low, almost down to his socks, so he looks like a stumpy medieval charger in armor and colors, ready for a miniature joust.  So far, we think it’s helping:  I haven’t yet found him screwed tight into his shrubby hidey-hole where he spent a lot of last summer.

During trick-training in the arena, Gus still gets naked.  It’s a chance for me to wipe his eyes and scratch his face, and empty his socks of the shavings that get in there when he lies down in his stall.  And after our session, we still go out grazing, since he finds the flies magically less annoying when he’s chewing.  The grass and clover are mangier these days, but the up-side is that Gus is actually willing to quit grazing before the flies eat him down to a skeleton.  On the sultriest days, when the bugs are always at their worst, Sandy leaves him inside, or brings him back in early, so he can shelter in the shady barn with his big electric box-fan blowing on him.

It’s a little sad that he’s a boy in a bubble, but it beats being bug bait.

108. Smokin’

Standing around while an animal grazes may have its pleasures, but it’s far from intellectually engaging.  So while Gus grazes, I make it my business to shoo away the biting flies by swinging the lead rope against his legs, gently scraping my boot along his shins, and chasing them off his belly and back.  I also make myself useful with brushless pre-grooming:  running my hands all over him to scrub off dead hair and wipe away any clinging mud or shavings or other debris.  

Today the winds are gusty.  That helps keep the flies off him, but I quickly realize it also reveals just how filthy he is.  In the past couple of days, he’s rolled repeatedly in a dust-bath wallow that he and his pasturemate Henry have excavated in their sandy-soiled paddock.   Now each time I rub Gus’s fur or pat his back, a visible puff of superfine dust erupts into the air and blows away.  I rub and pat and rub and pat, and the puffs just keep rising and blowing.  Trapped between his skin and his coat is what must be a wheelbarrowful of powdered dirt.

Absorbed in his grassy feast, Gus is oblivious, but I’m having a high old time watching the billows burst from under my hand.  I begin thumping him in syncopated rhythms, emitting complex smoke signals.  As I pat his back and neck and rump like a beatnik on bongos, he just grazes on, smoldering nonchalantly in the breeze.  Summertime, and the living is hazy.

101. Jawbone of an ass

When I watch Gus grazing, I get where Samson was coming from: like a heavy sword or battle axe, the jawbone of an ass really could slay a thousand men.  Gus chews like there’s no tomorrow — constantly, vigorously, powerfully.  I feel a twinge of sympathetic TMJ just thinking about the daily grind on his mandible, masseter, and molars.

As high summer diversifies the plants that are growing and flowering in our main grazing pasture, I’m once again keeping a mental log of what Gus chooses to eat.  Today he rocks my world by grabbing a big mouthful of Queen Anne’s lace, a carrot-related weed that I was surprised to see him avoid entirely last summer.  This one is over two feet tall, growing rank and dense under the fence rails.  Its stems are hard and thick and tough, but Gus’s jawbone doesn’t miss a beat, grinding up stalks, leaves, and flowers.  And going back for more.  

Then, to my even greater astonishment, he goes for a nearby chicory plant.  Last summer he took pains never to touch chicory, with its bitter radicchio flavor, but now he deliberately munches up the wiry stems, tough leaves, and blue flowers.  Wherefore, Gus?

Maybe he needs the minerals or alkaloids or vitamins in certain plants at certain times, and he knows what he smells inside each plant.  His main forage preference is always grass, but the other day included a plantain binge, while today (after the tall-weed appetizers) is all about white clover.  At one point, he stops munching and rubs his muzzle back and forth against the ground: either the flowers tickle his nose, or he’s been stung by one of the many bees working the clover patch.  

But soon he resumes chowing down.  When he wanders to some tall grasses, he tilts his head and maneuvers his very maneuverable lips to gather up a neat, long sheaf, which begins by hanging out one side of his mouth but gets shorter and shorter with each chew, as he efficiently ratchets it into his mouth and down his gullet.  Before the final bit disappears, he’s already mowing up the next serving.  Throughout any grazing session, his incisors pluck and yank a fresh mouthful even while his molars are still masticating the previous plug.  Not a moment’s rest for that awesome jawsome . . .