Thursday, June 21, 2007

Kids and Hoses

The points are going out on the well where the cows are at. We've got new points, as of today, and they'll be put on tomorrow, but in the mean time there's some weird processes to go through to make sure the cows have water. Like climbing down into the well house and "flicking" (a very technical term, explained to me by my father to mean jamming a piece of wood into the points and prying them back so that the springs engage properly) the points.

Apparently the cattle were not pleased with this development, because somehow they managed to get the float knocked off the tank. So instead of having a tank full of water sitting on a pedestal of ground formed by many hooves wearing down much mud, we had an empty tank floating peacefully in a gigantic mudhole, today.

We got the tank moved, new hose run, and started filling the tank, when my bottle calf came up wanting a drink. He's just too short to reach the bottom of the tank so I let him drink from the hose. This taught the other calves how to do it, and soon I had a huddle of calves, all sticking their tongues out and lapping at the flow of water from the hose.

Soon, the huddle was all the way around the tank, and I was having to stretch across to give drinks to those opposite me. I didn't mind, they were all too short to reach the level of the water that was in the tank. I had to laugh, though, when the calves opposite the ones getting a drink would continue licking at the air, stretching as far as they could reach, to try and play in the hose.

This seems to be a pattern in little ones of any species. My two year old nephew LOVES to play in the water from the hose. I can remember loving it as a kid. Most puppies will frolic in the sprinklers with great joy.

What I want to know is, what alchemy in the rubber of a hose makes the water coming out of it so much better than any other water in the world? There has to be something, and if I could figure it out, I could sell bottled childhood, and make a mint!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Farmgirl, years ago I had a larger that normal American Staffordshire Terrier (AKC Pit Bull Terrier) who weighed in at 70+ lbs. King was his name. That dog loved playing with the lawn sprinkler more than eating. He would chomp on the spray of water coming out of the sprinkler like it was beef steak. I would sometimes put a pressure nozzle on the end of the hose and aim the stream of water towards King. He would chomp on the stream of water from as far as I could shoot it all the way to where I was standing. People would stop in their cars (I lived on a cul-de-sac at the time) to watch the show. King’s belly would be so full of water after a few minutes of playing, he would spend the next 10 minutes reliving himself. (I didn’t know about hyper hydration at that time but it didn’t seem to affect him much thank goodness).

The Old Marine

HollyB said...

Dogs and water...we have a Yellow Lab who LOVES water, running, frozen, muddy, makes no diff to him, if it's wet he likes it. EXCEPT, he will not,under any circumstances, submerge his dangly bits! Haven't tested the Boxer/pointer pup, yet. he doesn't seem to mind the rain, too much.
The Boo Bear Baby girl, however detest being wet, in any shape, form or fashion. Water is for drinkin', sniffs Her Highness.

Anonymous said...

HollyB, I had another Pit/Weimaraner mix dog, reddish in color with the steel gray eyes indicative of the Weimaraner breed, whose name was Fritz (original right?). I took Fritz on his first real outing in some woods a few miles from the homestead. As we were walking along an abandoned railroad track, we came to a bridge. Fritz was bringing up the rear and as were started across the bridge, I looked back to see how he was doing. He was very carefully placing each foot – very slowly – on the cross ties. Of course, he could see through the cross ties to the ground below – approximately 25-30 feet. By the time we crossed the bridge, Fritz was a nervous wreck. I kept encouraging him all the way across and he gained his composure after we got off the bridge.

But, now to the water episode. We came upon a stock tank that was very muddy and had the same consistency of thin pudding. I picked up a stick, threw it into the pond and Fritz took off like a bullet to retrieve said stick. He made a great leap onto what he thought was solid ground due to the color of the water. The look on his face when he surfaced was beyond description. He floundered around a couple of seconds, spotted the stick floating on top of the water, grabbed it in his jaws, and swam to shore. He looked at me with an expression of, “What the heck just happened”? I couldn’t stop laughing long enough to explain to him that he couldn’t walk across the water. That gift was reserved for only a couple of people – Christ and Peter.

I will relate his tree climbing abilities at a later date.

The Old Marine

Lin said...

Hey, I want a serious update on that well fix, okay? We have a windmill well down and I think we could use the moral support on tackling it. Last time Mark went bobbing for missing parts at the bottom, he came up looking like he was covered in gray lithium grease (luckily it was just nasty mud but it was still pretty gross when you don't have real running water to wash off with).

FarmGirl said...

Lin, this well is an electric well. Your best bet for fixing a windmill is calling a professional. And make sure that your head is working properly, most of the problems show up there, seems like.