The last feedbag

Views: 154
Added: Fri Jun 20th 1:56am
Posted in: Living

• » print
• » report
• » email

The feedbag stands by the garage door, just inside and out of the weather.  It’s made of a couple of layers of heavy paper, with a glossy, colorful picture of a gleaming, healthy horse and a happy owner on the front.  The level of assorted junk and garden waste it holds is rising closer to the top, and when that finally happens the natural course of things will be to put it out with the trash.  But I find myself hesitating to top it off, prolonging the inevitable.  Because when this one is gone, it will be nearly the last tangible link to my life as a horse owner. 

 

The last horse it held feed for passed on a year and a half ago.  But a stack of empty feed bags remained, a seemingly endless supply that had held literally tons of Purina Equine Senior horse feed, or as I used to call it, “horse chow for old horses.”  It was sweet in smell, and faintly sticky to the touch, and it had kept my old horses going for many years past their natural expiration date.  And as a bonus, the empty bags did double and even triple duty—one could always dependably be found upright in a corner of the garage as a collection point for litter from the car, another standing by the house holding weeds and other trimmings from the garden.  I’d even used some once to cover rose bushes against a sudden frost.  There was no question that somewhere, there would always be another empty bag to fill.  Until now.

 

The reflex to check for a soft muzzle and a pair of inquisitive brown eyes hanging over the pasture fence as I make my way down the driveway has nearly faded away.  Once in a while, though, it returns.  And you can find the rest of that story in "Ghosts in the Pasture," at

 

http://runningwithstilettos.blogspot.com/2007/09/ghosts-in-pasture.html