getting chased by animals

I was having a comforting browse through my google reader last night.

Going off topic here for *just* a moment

What kind of blogs do you all read? (you note that I am assuming more than one person read this - well, 39 people follow, so hopefully two of you read from time to time.)

In my reader you can easily divide most of my subscriptions in to two areas - those I identify with and those that I want to be when I grow up. There's also a couple I read because they are quite frankly beautifully written, a few that transport me to another way of life and several that make me laugh out loud. Blogs themselves are a marvellous educational tool.

Back to the topic in hand...

So, there was I reading Soulemama. (If you're wondering, she falls firmly in to the "what I want to be when I grow up" divide - but with the home educating of four little ones that she occasionally writes about, well, then we stray into identifying.)

She has posted about her escaping pig, and as I read it, I was transported right back to my experiences of growing up on a farm. I can well remember nights staying up late, waiting for a favourite cow to calve, and longing to help deliver them but never being permitted because "a cows contractions could break a child's arm". At the age of ten I was well able to help ewe's deliver their lambs and each and every lambing I was in charge of feeding the orphan lambs. There were several times I was woken at scary o' clock because of a farm related incident.

I was chased by geese nearly every day - of which I am still terrified. I would come into the yard, and run as fast as I could to our old Dales pony, and vault on his back to escape the scary honking birds. Once a very brave gander pecked the heel of the horse, and ended up with his HEAD under the horses hooves. That was a weird experience.

I've been chased by dogs - a mad stray one that was chasing sheep and then decided I was a better target, I still have the scars on my knee from this incident. I've been chased by cows too, but nothing tops my Crazy Nan's tale, which is perfectly true as I've seen the newspaper clippings:

She lived for a time in a caravan by the sea with her husband (my Grandad) and her two young children (my Mother and my Uncle), and one particular Summer, the circus decided to camp next door. It was a very glamorous affair with a full entourage of jugglers, acrobats, stuntmen, animals of all shapes and sizes and a real live Ring Master with a curly black moustache. This was in the 1950's, to give you an idea of time period. My Nan adored the circus people and got on with them very well.

One day she was serving afternoon tea in her little caravan when she felt the ground shudder. She thought it was an earth quake, and for want of a better plan, she grabbed her two children and exited the caravan. To her utter astonishment she saw a herd of elephants bearing down on her, crashing through the caravans like they were made of paper. She picked up a child under each arm and made a dash for it, all the while aware that the herd was only moments behind her. She did survive, and by some miracle no one was seriously injured, although some property took rather a hammering.

The elephants were fine and none the worse for their adventure, and no one really knew what set them off in such a panic. The faded newspaper photo is of my ever glamorous smiling Nan with a back drop of utter chaos behind her.

Thus endith my tales of animal chases.

quite Rudyard Kipling.