Farm-Sitting

First off, sorry everybody for being so long in between posts, I've been having some technical difficulties but finally got them figured out, so here we are :)

 

 I got the coolest job over spring break two weeks ago! Some family friends of ours were going back to the States for a week, and left me to babysit their farm!

Even just being able to stay on such a beautiful property was a treat, the farm is on the top of a hill with an amazing view both inland and out to the ocean.

But even more than the location, I enjoyed the job. Sure it kinda stunk to have to get up early enough to get everything done and still try to get back home for breakfast/scripture study, but I loved taking care of the animals. There were four horses...

Charlie

Lofty

Joe

Robin

two cats...

Scrubs and BeeBee

(I only saw Scrubs twice over the whole week, obviously he's not very social :D whereas BeeBee literally followed me everywhere that I went)

two dogs...

Charlie and Pippa

 four cows, three goats, a chicken, and a bunch of sheep...

(this included a super friendly kid goat, a brand new lamb,
 and this big fat sheep. I no joke had to go roll him over one time because he was stuck on his back and couldn't get up!)

However my biggest adventure came with this little guy...

I had just got back to the house after feeding the horses, and it was already dark. I was standing on the front step to the house knocking the mud off my boots when BeeBee, the cat, started reaching for something right under the step I was standing on! Kneeling down on the ground beside the step I shined (is it 'shined' or 'shone'???) my headlamp up under the step, and what did I see but a little bunny rabbit sitting frozen just out of BeeBee's reach! I slid my arm toward it, assuming that it would bolt, but I guess I had scared the hops right out of him because he just sat frozen as I reached out and picked him up! Alright so now I was holding a tiny bunny in one and and trying to take my muddy boots off with the other, and if you think that's easy why don't you try it sometime! :D Anyway, I had just made it into the house when I realized I didn't have my camera! So instead I decided to use the laptop, but it was in another room with the dogs. I didn't want to try to keep them off the bunny, but I also couldn't just leave the bunny on my bed and run and get it. Suddenly I was struck with ingenious idea! I set the bunny gently in a dresser drawer, closed it tightly, and ran out of the room. Thirty seconds later I was back, pulled open the drawer, reached in to pull out my furry friend, but he was GONE! You can imagine how I felt, considering that this was not my house, or my dresser, or my clothes in the dresser (I was staying in the family's teenage boy's room). Turns out you could climb out of the drawer and into the body of the dresser. That is, if you were a furry bunny and happened to be stuck in a dresser drawer... It took me about five minutes to pull all the clothes (in nice tidy stacks) out of the other drawers and check that he wasn't in any of them, and then open and close them in the right order to force him down to the bottom of the dresser. Now I had him trapped, but soon found that human arms aren't made to bend in the right way to reach a little bunny in the far back corner of an old dresser. There was nothing else for it, I pulled the dresser away from the wall, and spent the next half an hour using the very inefficient screwdriver on my Swiss Army knife to take apart the back of the dresser enough to reach the little stow-away. After that he seemed to know that he'd been naughty, because he sat very still for a few pictures, and didn't give me any more problems. Needless to say by then I was sick of the whole episode and was happy to let him go.
Moral of the story: Carry my camera on me at all times. :)

Well that's it for now, as soon as I can organize our pictures I'll post about the second week of our break, which was even more exciting than the first!