The Home Invasion My son John’s multitalented ranch horse, Montana, has been recovering from a nasty injury sustained several months ago. To keep him quiet but allow him exercise, he is turned out, alone, in the indoor arena on the property. He can see and hear the other horses, and there is always plenty going on to keep him interested, but it isn’t the same as exchanging a nice comfy withers scratching, or getting the latest gossip nose to nose. Camp Tumalo, for those who don’t know, is a separate living unit on my son John’s horse property, which I am remodeling for part-time occupancy. It shares a common wall with the indoor arena. My east-facing windows look out over horse corrals, with a more distant view of trees, rolling hills, and endless vistas of usually blue skies and fluffy clouds. My south-facing bedroom window looks out over the newly completed large dog run, where Talili makes himself comfortable and Buddy patrols the unfamiliar fence line to select spots for excavation and escape, one of which (so far) has been highly successful. The back wall is the one that is shared with the arena. I have a very high window in my bedroom that looks over the arena, provided one has a neck as long as a giraffe. Since I do not, this window is used only as an additional source of light. The outside door in this bedroom opens to the dog run. I worried about Montana being alone, even though he gets plenty of attention , and I decided that he needed that little extra personal attention that an invalid always welcomes. Of course I made this decision late in the evening one night during renovations, when everyone else had taken off and I was alone. I didn’t want to pick my way through boxes, tools, partially assembled furniture and appliances waiting to be installed, so I picked up the apple I’d brought back with me to snack on, pulled my sturdy three-tier step stool over to the wall, and climbed cautiously to the top rung. From there, with the advantage of four extra feet of height, I could (barely) see into the arena and shove open the window, which obviously had not been opened for the past ten years or so. Montana looked suspiciously at this human dangling partway out a window and cooing to him, but then he got a whiff of the apple and he got the idea at once. He jogged right over to the window and happily accepted my offering. He enjoyed it so much that I began repeating this ritual a couple of times every day. I bought a ten-pound bag of apples for him. I had two nightstands ordered, but they had not arrived yet. I was using a two-drawer file cabinet as a nightstand and had positioned the step stool on the other side of the bed. Well, yesterday Julia arrived to do some errand running with me, and after we’d gotten that taken care of, John invited us up to his home on the front part of the property for dinner. Dustin had left for the weekend to visit his son, so it was just the three of us. John whipped up a gourmet meal and then we sat and talked until I glanced at my watch and noted with amazement that it was midnight. John headed to bed and Julia and I headed for the back part of the property to also head to bed. Once there, I was in bed very rapidly, but Julia detoured to take a hot bath. There are only two bedrooms at Camp Tumalo, one occupied by Dustin, so when she is there Julia bunks with me in the king-size bed. I was awake enough to vaguely note that she had climbed in on her side, but then I fell back into peaceful slumber which I was delusional enough to think would continue all through the night. It had been a very busy day. I had gotten a lot done. But I failed to take into consideration that there were a couple of things I had forgotten. One of them was giving Montana any treats that day. Another was that I had neglected to mention the treat ritual to Julia. Julia was sound asleep about an hour later when evidently Montana decided he had waited long enough for goodies. He wanted an apple, and he wanted it right then, and he didn’t want any nonsense beforehand. Accordingly, he came over to the wall under the window and threw his weight against it. The wall shook. So did the bed. Julia woke up in two one-hundredths of a second, suspecting, as she told me later, that we had had an earth tremor. This theory was dispelled an instant later when it happened again…this time hard enough to jolt me into partial wakefulness, and accompanied by a grunting sound. Julia shot bolt upright and reached over and unceremoniously whacked me. “Get up!” she hissed in alarm. “Somebody’s trying to get in!” At that same instant the whole bed shook a third time. This time I sat up, too, wide-eyed and remembering my Glock…which, inconveniently, was currently in the locked gun case on Cinnamon Ridge nearly an hour south. I had been awakened out of a dead sleep, remember, and so had Julia, and we didn’t stop to consider that Buddy and Talili were snoozing, not at all disturbed, or that if someone was trying to get in by crashing through the wall they were the most unsubtle criminal in history. I jumped out of bed and groped frantically for my flashlight, which was on the floor and had been jolted under the bed, and Julia raced to the kitchen for a weapon, tripping over a power cord but returning with a cast iron skillet with which to brain any potential invader. But by this time I had identified the sounds coming from the other side of the wall. Montana was letting his displeasure at the lack of treats be known. When Julia zoomed into the bedroom with the skillet, I told her, “It’s not a burglar. It’s Montana.” Julia blinked. She looked at the wall. I could see her processing the information that the wall was shared with the arena. She set down the skillet. At that precise moment an unmistakable snort came through the wall. “Um,” I said. “Uh, he wants an apple. I’ve been feeding him apples through the window because I thought he was lonely. I forgot to give him any today.” Julia looked at the wall, and then at me, and then at the stepstool on her side of the bed, and then at the skillet. Without a word she picked up the skillet, went out the bedroom door, and returned a moment later without the skillet but with an apple and a knife. I was not entirely sure to what purpose she intended putting the blade until she cut the apple into quarters and offered them to me. I climbed up on the step stool and fed Montana his apples, aware of noises behind me. Julia was muttering, and not quietly, about People who Spoiled Animals and then were Inconsiderate Enough not to warn unsuspecting friends that they might be Awakened in the Middle of the Night by Noises suggestive of Home Invasion. However, when I came back down to floor level, she had pulled on a pair of sweat pants over her nightgown, donned a jacket, and picked up my flashlight. I followed her out into the hall as she stepped into a pair of John’s old rubber muck boots. “Where are you going?” I asked. Its two in the morning. “As long as I’m up,” she said, “I might as well go and check on Doll Face. She might have knocked over her water or need some spinach or something. I’ll bring another apple for Montana when I get back.” We locked glances -- and we both burst out laughing. Doll Face was fine, and Montana got his second apple. But will I forget his treats again? Not likely.
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 02:38:02 +0000
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