The bridge

 Today was horrible!  We left before the lady threw out our Hey! and then she didn't come back to see where we were until she gave the old ponies their lunch.  She was walking toward the pond to take pictures of the ducks and she could see that we were running in our pasture.  So she walked all the way back and went into Marco's pasture and then she crawled under the predator-proof fence (which is apparently not very predator proof) and then under the wire fence and then under the electric fence rope and then she was in our pasture.   She asked us why were were running back and forth by the creek, so we went over to the bridge so she could see the terrible problem.  The board at the other end of the bridge was loose and had slid over about the width of a pony hoof.  It was really really scary.  The bridge is all white and now there was a horrific dark gap at the end of the bridge.  The lady walked across the bridge and petted some of us ponies.  Then she said "C'mon Harley" and Harley followed her onto the bridge.  She stopped when she got to the end of the bridge and told Harley he should jump over the dark gap. Then she jumped to show him and Harley jumped too and then they were on the other side of the creek.   Harley was happy to be over there away from the rest of us.  He thought there would be carrots and riding and fun stuff, but instead, the lady came back over to our side and asked my big sister Gypsy to come across the bridge.  Harley is our big brother, but Gypsy is the boss of us.   Gypsy walked on the bridge.  She sniffed it and pawed it and looked at the dark gap and then she said "No way" and backed off the bridge  She told the rest of the ponies to back away, so we all ran over to the creek to see if we could find another way across that had miraculously opened since the last time we looked.  So the lady came over to the creek and walked across where we usually drink water and ford the creek when there isn't white stuff everywhere. You know, now with the white stuff, the water gets hard and gray and slippy on top and then it gets white stuff on top of that, so it is especially scary. The lady walked on the hard water and it made loud banging noises and then it came apart and you could see some of the dark wet water underneath it. So there was no way we could walk in that.  She did that to a couple of places, but they were all dangerous. So she went back to the bridge and took off the wobbly board because she said she didn't want anyone to step on it.  Under where the board used to be there was now a gigantic hole  The hole was so deep that if a pony put its foot in the hole, it would go way way down to where you would not even be able to see its ankle.  She then asked some of us other ponies to cross the bridge.  So Pinke trotted up and jumped across the hole and then Lulu. And then Sienna.   I thought about crossing the bridge, but it really was super scary and Gypsy did not think it was a good idea.  Then the lady got some Hey! from Marco's shed and she did that funny clop noise  thing with her tongue and next thing we knew,  Gypsy got bold and so the rest of us decided to go too. So our breakfast was super late and turned into dinner and we almost all died falling through the bridge.  So tomorrow, we are not going anywhere near that bridge.  Maybe.      

Coyote

 In the morning, there was a funny noise coming from behind the trees  over toward where the big scary black cows hang out.  The noise was kind of like when there is a a squeaky wheel, going "Ooh-ah!" over and over and over again.  The lady looked at the big dog and asked "Is that a dog barking?"  The big dog agreed that it sounded like a dog, but he didn't care because he couldn't see any dog around and he can't be bothered being worried about far away dogs that he has never even met.  Then the sound came from behind the woods by our out-back pasture, except we weren't out-back there because we were up-front eating Hey! The lady took some Hey! to Marco and his buddies with the big orange machine.  While the ponies were eating their Hey!, they stopped and all stared and pointed their noses at an animal that came running across the pasture out of the woods.  At first, the lady thought it was a fox, but when it got closer, she could see that it was a small coyote.  The coyote hardly looked at the ponies as it was loping by.  Ponies do not care about coyotes, so the ponies went back to eating their Hey! The lady walked toward the woods where the coyote came from and she heard another lady calling something, but then there was no more noise.  The lady was glad that no dogs or other ladies came into the pasture to chase the coyote.  She would like the coyote to stay in her woods.  She thinks there are plenty of bunnies for the coyote to eat.  She also thinks that the summer population of Canada honkers exceeds the optimum pond capacity and would not mind if the coyote ate 50 or 60 of them.  

Hey! Strings!

 Now there is cold white stuff all over the ground.  A couple of weeks ago a LOT of that white stuff fell out of the sky and we could hardly walk around.  I mean really.  It was up to our bellies.  We had to send the taller ponies along the trails ahead of us just so we could get through.  But then it got warmer and there was water everywhere.  So now there is just a little bit of white stuff but it is hard to find nice grass so the lady has to bring us dried grass that she calls Hey!  It is the same thing that she yells when I pin my ears back and swing my butt toward my sisters.  The Hey! is tied up into squares with strings.  The Hey! we get now has blue strings.  I mean really bright blue strings.  Like Mediterranean waters off the coast of Sardinia blue.  So the other day the lady was throwing Hey! to the ponies in the three board fence pasture and she decided to hang the strings on the fence.  She usually collects the strings and puts them in feed bags under the delusion that she is going to find a use for them someday.  But she looped the strings around the top board and left the ends hanging down like a fringe.  She had this idea that if she put the strings on the fence every day, by the end of the Hey! throwing season, the whole fence would have long fancy blue fringe hanging on it all the way back to the pond.  So she did that for a couple of days, but today when she got to the fence there were no blue strings.  The strings were all lying in the pony pasture and they were dirty and trampled and chewed on.  Apparently those ponies were not interested in a freeform blue string art formation.  (One of the ponies tried to say that Auntie Fah had pulled the strings down, but the lady didn't buy it because there is no one on the farm named Fah.)  So she picked up all the strings before they got frozen in the mud and became pony trip hazards.