The Baby



Mother and Child, originally uploaded by Matthew Singer.

We had a baby.

And by We, I mean Erin.

And by Erin, I mean her horse.

Thursday night (Friday morning) around 12:30, we went out to check on Mae and turn in for the night, but we heard groaning and grunting coming from the barn. So, Erin rushed up to see if she had gone into labor, and indeed she had. I grabbed boots and the camera and headed up. At first, there was just a hoof sticking out from Mae’s behind. Then she laid down and gave a few pushes. Within a half an hour, the whole baby emerged. I spent the next hour or so documenting the the first moments of the baby’s life before calling it quits. Erin stayed out longer, but I had an exam in the morning and was not about to lose sleep. I went back to the barn in the morning just before leaving for school to snap a few photos in the daylight.

Over night, the, baby took its first steps and nursed. It seems that’s all the baby does now. It just follows Mae wherever she goes, falls over in awkwardness regularly, and naps often. Nap times on Saturday and Sunday were bliss with full sunshine and 60-degree weather.

And so it is, we have a baby, another mouth to feed, and another cute, expensive animal to take care of.

Similar Posts

  • Fall Foliage

    I’ve been spending a lot of time finishing up my dissertation proposal, which is due in a little over a week, and that has kept me from taking time to enjoy the outdoors. We got some considerable rain over the past weekend which lead to some dramatic skies and really clear views on Monday and Tuesday, but I just wasn’t able to take advantage of the nice conditions. I did get out for a little bit yesterday afternoon to check out the fall foliage in the arboretum on campus. In Idaho, we don’t see very much fall color. There are…

  • |

    A Walk Around the Yard

        When you live somewhere long enough and see the same scenery day after day, you sort of become numb to it. It no longer thrills you the way it did when you first moved in. That’s sort of how I feel. Don’t get me wrong, I love my house and its location, but it feels like I could have better scenery out my window living somewhere else. The scenery here is never actually dull. I’ve got a great view of Spud Hill, Deary’s local “mountain” that stands over 1000 feet above the town, and most evenings, we get…

  • Puppies for Sale

    The puppies are now over 8 weeks old and oh so cute. As you can imagine, seven growing pups indoors can create quite a mess that is hard to keep on top of. On top of that, any time you step into their room, they all mob you for attention. So, as spring weather has descended upon the Palouse, we found scrap lumber and fencing and built an outdoor playpen for the dogs. So far it is doing the job. It’s also giving the pups some much needed fresh air and sunshine, which in turn tires them out so all…

  • Latah County Fair

    Clara loves animals. At home, she loves to pet the dogs and the cats. She tries to pet the chickens and gets all excited when we catch one and bring it over to her. She loves saying hi to the goats and touching the horses. So we brought her to the Latah County Fair where she could look at and touch a whole host of other animals that we don’t have on our property. But rather than write about this, I thought I’d change things up and record this account on video.

  • Mount Rogers, VA

    Well, my time in Alabama has come to an end. To catch up on this thing, I spent the fall season at the McDowell Environmental Center as an educator down in northern Alabama. I enjoyed it so much that I returned for the spring season. The area is a sandstone highlands carved into canyons by the rivers. Its beautiful and biologically diverse and very interesting. I had a great birding season with 117 species this spring, lots of wildflowers, and good herping. The season ended May 19, and on Sunday the 21st, I headed north with Damascus, VA as my…

  • Life at Camp

    I haven’t been very good at updating this or my livejournal in a while. I’ve been fairly busy for the past few weeks. I returned to my job at the mountain campus (www.mountaincampus.org, check us out) in the middle of March and spent the first two weeks cleaning up and preparing for the season. With all of the heavy snow this winter, we had a fair number of trees fall in critical places, so we spent the better part of a week removing some of them. It’s been so wet, though, that we can’t get to all of them with…