Well Ain't That a Kick in the Arm.

I can now honestly and faithfully report that getting the crap kicked out of you by a horse is NOT FUN. It HURTS. It is also scary, chilling even. If that twelve hundred or so pound beast had kicked just six or seven inches higher he'd have smashed his muddy hoof into my face.

Big dumb cottonpickin' &*^# freaking $^%*! HORSE.

Note please that in none of the above (not even in the suggested vulgarity) did I say Stupid. That epithet I reserve for myself.

After all I was the one who did not observe the beast closely enough to realize that he was restive or starting to 'feel his oats' and was thus surprised into just standing there turned slightly to my left with my right arm pulled up over the right side of my chest as the beast brushed by on that side.

The good thing about that is I have two big nasty bruises, one on my forearm and the other on my upper arm where his hoof hit me instead of a bigger hoof shaped bruise on my right boob.

The bad part is he hit me hard enough to knock me down on ground that was, at the time, as hard as brick and I landed badly on my left wrist. A wrist now decorated with an ugly big black brace that the Dr. tells me I must wear until the fourth of January.

The brace does help keep the hairline fracture in one of the many tiny wrist bones from hurting much and the pain meds prescribed do a fairly decent job not only on the wrist but on the back, shoulder and assorted other aches and pains that showed up shortly after the incident. But nothing helps me cope with trying to type with the thing on.

I've recently stopped taking that medicine however, and switched to a plain OTC pain killer as I just don't like the idea of taking anything with a narcotic in it.

Don't know if it's the narcotic I don't trust (Think of the old Native American tales of either the Scorpion or the Rattle Snake) or if it is myself that I don't trust with the narcotic.

Oh, some of you may not have heard of either of those tales. They are cautionary tales, both of them, and follow the same general story line. Basically an innocent, either a young warrior or larger animal comes across one of the poisonous two I mentioned above. I believe that with the snake it is a young warrior on his spirit quest that finds a rattle snake high up on a mountain, nearly frozen. He starts to leave the snake there to die but it speaks to him and begs him to take it down to the valley where it can survive promising that it will not bite him if he saves it's life. So the young warrior puts the nearly frozen snake inside his shirt and starts down the mountain. The snake soon warms up while riding there and, as soon as it can move, it bites the young warrior. The warrior cry out as he falls, "Why did you do this you foolish snake! We are still far up the mountain! I will die of your poison and you will surely freeze and die as well!" The snake replies, "True. But I am a rattle snake and you knew what I was when you picked me up!"

The tail of the scorpion is much the same only, as I remember it is a wolf or some such that a Scorpion convinces to carry it across a flooded river. Half way across the scorpion stings the beast carrying it. The stung critter says "Why did you sting me! Now we both will drown!" To which the scorpion replies. "I only did what it was in me to do. You knew I was a scorpion when you agreed to carry me."

Much the same can be said, I suppose, for me and that horse. I knew it was a big beast. That much was obvious. I also knew that he had been penned up in a smaller area than he needed while a painful hoof was being doctored. A hoof that he wasn't limping on near as much as he had been. If I had been paying attention I might have already let the fellow out into the larger pasture where he could run and burn off those oats he expended by kicking me. Instead I went about my chores as I had been doing them during the time the horse was being kept up.
That is one of the things that we humans really must remember. Especially about our fellow critters that happen to be either/and/ or bigger, heavier, stronger than us or even with sharp claws and teeth. They have their view of the world and what should happen in it.

Horses like to 'play' and often do so by bumping past each other and letting their hooves fly 'knowing' that the other 'horse' will of course start running and bucking as well. I was not another horse but a rather clumsy, fat, slow, old human too startled to move. So instead of first shying away and then running and bucking along, I got kicked in the arm.

I knew what kind of critter I was walking into a pen with, I had just not been observant enough to realize that said critter had become restless.

So here I am, trying to type with a brace on my left wrist.

At least it wasn't a kick in the head.

(Note to any who may have read the tales I mentioned above: I'm doing this whole thing from memory. If I quoted too much to not say more about where I got those stories, please let me know the book they are in etc. Firstly so I can come back to this blog and make note of it and secondly so I can look the book up at the library and read it again. At least I don't think I own the book I read them in. Hmmm. Maybe I'll start rummaging around in the boxes of books I still haven't unpacked. As I remember that was an interesting book...now what was it called...)