I have an abnormal fear of mice. There’s just not enough room for them and for me in the barn.

Tails from the Barn -- by Carol Gosselin

This morning I was cleaning the Mare’s stall. I was shoveling poop into a cart when something moved. I threw in a couple more shovelfuls and as I turned toward the cart there it was… a MOUSE. I had scooped up a mouse!

I hate mice. A lot. This one must have weighed 50 pounds. But there he was… inside the cart with his tiny front feet perched on the edge of the cart. We stared at each other, waiting to see who would blink first. I don’t know who was more afraid of whom. (Most likely I was the more scared one). I decided to wheel the cart outside and let him jump off and run away, but as soon as I barely moved the cart, he jumped off on his own and ran towards the door. I breathed a huge sigh of relief… I was safe now. I went back to stall cleaning.

Then this happened. There are two horses in the barn, a Mare and a Gelding. They are very tight, attached at the hip and ankle… until it comes to the Mare and her grain. I opened her outside door to let her into her stall since I had just finished cleaning it and her breakfast was ready and waiting for her in her feed bucket.

The Gelding— the Mare’s barn mate— will try to push her away and get her grain. When I let her in, he was not close to her so I dumped her feed into her bucket feeling 100% sure Gelding was far enough away, that Mare could get right to her bucket and start eating. Wrong. Somehow he came out of nowhere and pushed past her.

Now the three of us are in there and he’s got his head in her feed bucket and is eating her breakfast.

Here is Gelding (left) pushing Mare right out of the way to get her grain.

I tried to shoo him out but all he’d do is back away then come right back to her bucket. Mare was not happy. Neither was I. I decided to leave the stall as it was too crowded in there for me to be around two horses that both wanted to be at that bucket.

As I walked out of her stall to watch and see if they could fix this problem themselves, I said to Mare (I actually really said this to her out loud) “Get him out of here. Don’t let him eat your food!” In the BARELY TWO seconds it took me to close her door and step into the barn aisle, I turned around and couldn’t believe what I saw! She had backed him far enough out of her stall that his hind end was outside and now he couldn’t reach her grain.

Gelding is pushed by Mare out of her stall so that most of him is outside and he can’t get to her grain.

Mare now has her grain to herself. At age 32, she’s still got it!