Ride On

Chapter Four

The next day, while I was feeding the horses, I noticed something unusual.

Chris was working one of the mares in the round pen when I realized I forgot to tell him that Spurs was knocked up. Trigger had been sore and whiny all day so I let him rest rather than having to deal with it. I have to give him some slack, he just had his manhood forcefully taken from him.

I had literally just started to walk into the barn to find my phone, seeing as I'd set it down and forgot, when the strange thing happened. We have this large trash bucket filled with sacks of grain, you see, in case a horse needs special attention to keep weight on. For some reason, there was a hole in the lid.

I grabbed my phone from a square bale of hay and shoved it into my pocket, peering into the small hole. It was too dark to see, but I could hear the unmistakable noise of squeaking.

"Rats." I shouted.

That wasn't supposed to be a pun. I was actually searching for a decent exclamation. The trash can was literally filled with mice. I could see them, plain as day, when I shone my phone's flashlight in.

Jumping back, I tried to think of what to do. The grain was bad, there was no way to salvage that. It was likely covered in mouse poo anyway. Nobody in their right mind would feed that to a horse.

You had to be completely left minded to do so.

Bad joke. Pretend it never happened.

Luckily, Chris had just come back in the barn with Pretty and as he let her go, I dragged him to his truck and literally forced him to drive down the road. I hate rodents.

"So, we need to buy some rat poison." I casually mentioned as Chris tried to control the truck, since it was sliding in the gravel. When he got it steady, he replied.

"Why?" I had an immediate answer for this one.

"Because I'm going to force feed it to you, Chris." I snapped, hoping to ease his stress. "Really? We have mice. In the grain bin." I added, almost laughing at how he paled.

"Oh." Chris sighed, visibly less scared. "Well that means we need more grain." He acknowledged, changing course to head to the feed store. Hopefully they have some rat poison laying around, too.

"And a new method of storage." I added, leaning back. He did likewise, retiring one hand to the console and steadying the truck with his left. "By the way, your horse is pregnant." I casually informed him.

"HOW?" He shouted angrily, losing control of the truck for a moment.

"Trigger was hiding his balls all this time. It's okay, though, they're gone now. But we're stuck with another foal." I chuckled. He did not seem so amused, silently plotting murder or something.

The next mile, I stared blankly out the window, trying to get rid of the images of the mouse colony. Why haven't the cats been doing their job? We had like, six of them. That's more than enough to kill a few...thousand...mice...

I texted my dad on the matter, receiving an immediate reply of, I thought you knew. The fact that I didn't know infuriated me.

What do I not know, I asked, without using punctuation. I didn't want to seem angry...just yet.

One got squarshed under a tractor, one drowned, one got caught on the wrong side of an angry horse, and the other haven't been here for weeks. He informed me. Where have I been for the last forever? I need to quit zoning out.

So you're saying we need more? I asked.

Ya, they were getting old anyway. Dad concluded.