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

  • Mexico, Auroras, and other June Fun

    I’m a bit late getting some updates out, so I’m going to condense about 3 posts in to one in the hopes that I can get caught up. So let’s start with my trip to Mexico. If it wasn’t obvious from my last post, I went down to the Mayan Riviera with Erin and the rest of my family to celebrate the marriage of my sister and now brother-in-law. We all stayed at an all inclusive resort on the beach in Playa del Carmen, which sounds like a great idea, but in practice, I don’t think I’ll ever do it…

  • |

    Chickadees

    For Christmas, I bought Erin a new bird feeder to replace one that had been broken earlier in the summer. A few weeks ago, we finally got some seed and put it outside, but this was in the middle of a cold snap where daytime highs remained in the low 20’s, and the nighttime lows, well, we just won’t go there. For about a week, the feeder hung with no activity. Then, as the cold began to lift, there was a single chickadee in the lilac tree. It must have spread the news because a few days later, the feeder…

  • |

    My Research: What I have been up to

    Last week, the fruits of my last three year’s work has finally come to fruition in the journal PLoS One. The premise is that the personality behavior we call boldness, or the bold-shy continuum, is not only heritable, but a genetically correlated multivariate trait. The research is essentially a continuation of a project Mary Oswald completed for her dissertation, however upon first submission, reviewers criticized the study for its lack of replication. So, in the Summer of 2010, she set up a second selection experiment which I took over and have been maintaining since. Boldness is an interesting behavior to…

  • |

    The latest hype in Moscow

    The latest rage in Moscow, Idaho is the sighting of an immigrant that shouldn’t be here. A Northern Hawk Owl (Surnia ulula) has been spotted in Moscow across Rt. 8 from the Safeway parking lot. The earliest sightings on eBird show that this individual has been hanging around since Tuesday, reliably in the same spot. This is an exciting discovery because the Northern Hawk Owl isn’t supposed to be seen this far south. It’s native range is exclusive to Canada, and visits to the United States are few and infrequent. It’s unclear at this time how long the owl will…

  • First Snow

    First Snow, originally uploaded by Matthew Singer. On Friday, I woke up to find a light layer of white on everything. At first, I thought it was a heavy frost, but when I put my glasses on, the truth was revealed. We had our first snowfall. It wasn’t much, less than an inch, and by late afternoon, all was gone. It wasn’t the first snow of the season either, but it was the first to stick on the ground, especially at our elevation. But Sunday night, it began to snow some more, and the accumulation was greater. It still wasn’t…

  • Perseoids

    Every summer at early-mid August, we enter a portion of the solar system rife with meteors, and ever year around this time, many of those chunks of rock and debris hit our atmosphere and burn up, giving us the Perseoid meteor shower. This year, the shower did not occur during a full moon, and so the skies were dark and the stars were bright. Some of the photo club folks wanted to have a camping trip this weekend, and that devolved into a fire and star photography night at our place. The meteor shower was pretty good Saturday night. There…