Poop Scoopin' Boogie

I welcome any songwriter to come up with some lyrics for my morning activities over the next few days. My sisters, Barbara and Laurie, have taken two of their horses (Rusty and April) to the Eastern Washington Arabian Shows in Spokane. Each year, at the Interstate Fairgrounds, the club sponsors two shows in one. The classes are the same; just different judges for each two-day run.

With Rusty and April in Spokane, that leaves 11 horses at the Colburn Tibbs Arabian farm. Most observers will tell you that my sisters take better care of their horses than most people do their kids. I concur. Each horse has its own stall. Many wear blankets to enhance their beauty. All Tibbs horses enjoy the confidence and security of knowing they'll never live anywhere else.

To make sure this fastidious tender loving care continues in their absence, Barbara and Laurie always contract out among family members for the much-coveted job of providing nourishment and mucking out stalls. That's where I often get the nod. I do this two or three times a year, and through my experiences of scooping up all that poop, I've gotten some definite impressions about the personal habits of each of those lovely horses.

Since Rusty and April are in Spokane, I don't get any easy deals on stalls. I really like April because she always limits her deposits to two small areas. Most April apples fall in the southwest corner, while she breaks the monotony by leaving a couple of piles right near the door. Rusty keeps his produce pretty well-confined to the western wall area of his stall. Fairly easy, no nonsense job with these two.

I swear that April's mother, Fancy has rotator blades just inside her anal opening cuz her apples are always pureed and sprayed throughout the stall. In fact, I often have a hard time distinguishing Fancy apples from the shavings.

Then, there are the geldings: Beau, Chris and Telly. Their deposits are usually a lot heavier than their female counterparts because they seem to have a special knack for distributing blasts of urine in all the right places, thus adding more weight to the apple load.

Of the stalls left in the big barn, Minisha's deserves the most appreciation. She's dainty and refined. That sophisticated personality seems to transfer clear through to the neatly-placed droppings. Coquette and Kelly show no favoritism for where they like to go number two. In each case, virtually, the entire stall in needs a once-over with the poop pick.

When all those stalls are clean, which is several wheelbarrow loads later, I head out to the indoor arena to scoop up the nocturnal work of four more Arabian ladies: Molly, Raven, Jamboree and Rosie. I'd classify Molly, Raven and Jamboree (except for Jamboree's artistic bas relief caked along her north wall) as fairly nondescript and equally messy in their bathroom habits, but I'd say Rosie definitely doesn't live up to what her name suggests.

She's a total slob. Sometimes I wonder if she isn't trying create a new style of horsebarn art because she certainly doesn't limit her juicy apples to the floor. Rosie's stall walls are often smeared with a blend of abstract green images.

Today marks the start of another four-day run for my poop scoopin' duties. That means in 44 stalls, I'll be done. But, I'm rejoicing this morning because of the overnight discovery that I'll have an assistant, thus cutting that number in half. Debbie decided to stay through the Memorial Day weekend so she's gonna help me out.

She'll get her indoctrination this morning into the best methods for most efficiently picking those apples from the shavings and dumping them into the wheelbarrow. Then, our aromatic twosome will head home and fight over who gets to jump into the bathtub first.

After today, Debbie may have a whole new perspective on those elegant equine pets with their soft noses and distinctive personalities---right down to their individual poop styles.