Funny Acres - There Must Be A Sign...

My wife is a big-time animal lover. Any critter that gets into her care is spoiled and pampered. As a nationally recognized rabbit judge, she knows her stuff and can keep her critters healthy. Just ask the 65+ bunnies in her own collection! So it is no surprise that rabbit breeders give her bunnies that are past their prime so they can have a place to hang out comfortably.

One rabbit was my favorite. He showed up supposedly past his prime and would have likely been 'put down' by its owners if it hadn't found our home. For an over-the-hill bunny, this chap not only chased the few female rabbits that are also turned out, he went outside to 'play' with the local wild bunnies, would try to breed the barn cats, and I spotted him chasing a chicken one day. Now that's how to spend your old age!

One morning, about 6:30AM, I'm sipping my coffee and reading emails when the doorbell rang. When I opened the front door, the Deputy Sheriff asked if I had a white horse. I told him that ours were all shades of brown, no whites. That's when he let me know that a white horse was trying to break into our pasture to play with our horses. We walked out to the fenceline and sure enough, there she was hopping around and trying to take out the fence rails. Fortunately, my wife knew that this horse belonged to a neighbor who was out of town, and evidently broke through her own fence, was nearly hit by a car (the panicked driver then calling the Sheriff's Department) and ended up at our place. To make matters more interesting, this horse was in heat and she wanted to play with our horses. She hadn't done her homework, unfortunately, as our males are geldings. Too bad. The horse was caught and put into a guest stable while the Deputy and I watched in admiration and finished our coffee.

Then there are the two cats that are dumped on our doorstep because of a family dispute - he loves the cats and she was going to kill them - literally. We eventually found them homes once they recovered from that trauma.

We found a dog that had been abandoned in the snow a few miles from here. My wife spotted him in a snow pocket off the side of the road while going on an errand, and found him still there on her return. Nobody in that area knew the dog, someone had obviously dumped him there to die. Of course he's now spoiled too.

The final straw was just a few weeks ago, when I looked out the back window toward the barn and spotted a peacock standing at the window looking in. What is this? Is there a sign in front of our house, written in some universal animal language that says: "Suckers within!"? We did find the owner of that peacock and sent him home. What next?