midnight madness

Disclaimer: The story you are about to read is completely true. Believe me, I couldn't make up something this good. Oh, and you should know that my parents are out of town this week. Here goes...

Last night, after a day of running from tornados, Joe and I had dinner, put Natalie to bed, and got into our pjs to relax and watch a little tv. Around 11:00 pm, I noticed that the dogs outside were barking like crazy... so much so that it was distracting me from the show we were watching. So Joe opened the front doors, looked outside, and said "it looks like there's something moving around out there." I told him that it was probably a cat or another dog or something and not to worry about it, but 5 minutes later when the barking still hadn't stopped, Joe got a flashlight and went outside. He came back about a minute later and said, "Um, we have a situation." I went out to see what was going on and saw that two of our mules and one of the horses had gotten out of the pasture and were walking around in the front yard.

I called Leigh & Kev and Adam to come help us get them put back up and then ran back in the house to grab some shoes, another flashlight, and Natalie's baby monitor. I was in the house maybe 2 minutes, but that was long enough for the 2 mules to get scared (I guess of Joe) and run at top speed down the driveway and then on down the road. Right after that, Adam got here and he and Joe went driving down the road looking for the mules.... leaving me here, armed with a flashlight and a baby monitor, to make sure that the horse still grazing in the front yard didn't decide to go down the drive too. Leigh and Kevin pulled up soon after and Leigh got out to help me while Kevin went down the road to help Joe and Adam with the round up.

Leigh ran to the barn to grab a rope while I kept watch on the horse in the yard. After mild persuasion by a bucket of feed, we were able to get the rope on the horse. Just as we were about to take it to the barn, we heard the mules running (at full speed!) back up the road towards the house. Thinking that the boys had succeeded and all this was about to be over, Leigh and I started towards the barn with the horse. (A little sidenote: While putting the horse away, Leigh ran into the electric fence. I don't think it was turned on, but she got tripped up, and fell and busted her lip.) About 10 seconds later, the two mules run up to our drive... and then right past it. They turned and went up the neighbor's drive and kept going behind the neighbor's house and onto their porch.

Since it was around 11:30 pm by this time, Kevin rang the neighbor's doorbell (waking him up, of course) to let him know why there were 2 vehicles in his driveway and 3 men and 2 mules on his back porch. At this point the story gets a little fuzzy since Leigh and I were still watching from across the street, but from what I've been told, here's how it went down at the neighbor's house.

While the mules were on the porch, Adam was able to get a rope around one of them, but before he could start leading it back home, the other mule got scared and started running towards Adam. This scared the mule he was holding on to and it also started to run... Adam, refusing to let go of the rope, was running along with them (all this, remember, is in the neighbor's back yard) until they ran him into a wall and he had to let go. The mules took off into the woods, but luckily, the neighbor jumped on his four-wheeler and chased after them.

Now, there are 4 men in 2 trucks and 1 four-wheeler chasing 2 mules up and down our road and it's getting close to midnight.

Finally, they catch the small mule and the big one follows as they lead her up the driveway. Kev and the neighbor (yeah, I still don't know his name) put the small mule in the barn, but the other mule is now running in circles all around our house. I stood in the driveway with a flashlight trying to keep it from going back onto the road and Leigh, Kevin, Joe and Adam chased it around our yard for another 10 minutes or so until it finally ran into the barn. By the time it was all done, we'd spent over an hour trying to get those crazy animals back where they belonged.

Oh, I forgot to mention that Adam's vehicle got stuck in our muddy yard during the chase. So after the animals were put away, we had to get his truck out of the yard.

Joe and I were both muddy and sweaty and tired. By the time we'd had showers and got in bed, it was 1:15 am. I looked at Joe and said "Wow, that was an adventure." and his response to me was "Well, I guess I'm the only man in Alabama who's ever worn blue silk pajama pants to chase mules."

I wish I had some pictures to post of this one, but it was dark and raining, and I think I'd have had a few angry people on my hands if I'd started taking pictures instead of helping with the round up.