Critters on the loose...

"Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him." - Epictetus

 Yesterday evening we were all engrossed in our own activities.  I had just had a friend fix my desktop PC and was enjoying the ability to use it again - he had to re-install Windows due to a BIOS setting I had missed when I built the machine :(  The wife and kid were engrossed in their phones.  The landline rang, and at the other end was a distressed neighbor.  He and his family were over in Seattle, but their livestock had escaped from their pen - and could he ask us a favor, and round them up please?

 Two goats and a horse had escaped from their enclosure, and they were wandering around in the dark.  I'm *not* a farm kind of guy, but I do my best to be a good neighbor, so I told him that we would take care of it.  An elderly relative lives with them, but she's in no condition to chase animals through the forest.  So the kid and I dressed up for the cold and we drove over there in the dark, armed with flashlights.

I was extremely relieved to find that the critters hadn't wandered far at all - I was worried that they might have gone off into the forest.  One horse remained in the enclosure, kicking at the gate, while the other horse was standing near the house, along with the two goats.  After 10 minutes or so, we were able to entice them back into the pen with the help of some feed.  The horse kicking at the gate would not get out of the way for the returning animals, so it was a difficult chore to get them past it.

Next, I walked the perimeter of their pen in the dark, looking for the location where they must have escaped from.  Eventually on the back side, I located a panel of hog fence that had apparently been pushed down by one of the horses.  I pulled it back into place and then returned to our house to grab some bailing wire and side-cutters.  I had no idea where my neighbor might keep such things, so it was faster to get stuff from the shop.  

My daughter ensured the fence panel stayed put while I made that trip, and then held the flashlight whilst I secured the hog fence to the adjacent pipe corral sections.  It wasn't terribly tidy, but it was secured tightly - and better than what we found.  Afterwards, I filled up their water trough as it was looking a bit low.  I had to hand-carry buckets of water from the spigot, as the water hose was frozen solid in the snow.

It was not our normal evening, and that's a huge understatement.