Between Us and Mr. Insane

I haven't been writing much lately. Most of the stuff that's actually going on with me right now, the stuff I want desperately to write about, I shouldn't. Law suits that I'm not sure would be great to talk about online. Serious family upset that is not my story to tell, and too touchy to air publicly, anyway.

I can tell you about this, though. Or, at least, I think I can. I don't know. Let's see if I can get myself sued.

One of the many ongoing awkward aspects of our current living situation (you know, the situation where a guy is wrongfully trying to throw us out) is the pony that the owner keeps here.

This guy has a whack job very curious notion of what it means to take care of an animal. He goes for weeks-sometimes months-without cleaning the pony's stall. Keeps her in this disgusting environment for weeks on end, though there is a paddock for her to graze in not twenty feet away. Waters her in an algae-coated bucket. Gives us the delightful choice between complicity in a serious case of animal abuse and the potential fallout of turning our landlord in for it.

Over the years that we have been here, Carl has taken it upon himself to put her out to munch on grass and get some sun from time to time, and clean her stall when it gets really really bad. As things became kind of testy between us, the whack job owner of the pony and property responded to Carl's interference (and apparent rude condemnation of the owner's mad pony care skills) with a padlock on the stall door. He claimed at one point that he doesn't want her to be out to graze because of "West Nile Virus." He also claimed that giving her apples and carrots will cause her to "get founder." He says these things with the stubborn-old-German-man tone in his voice that suggests his absolute knowledge of all things, and indicates that we can just go to hell.

I think this man is insane. (What is that that I just did? Libel? Slander? Well, it's too late now. He's evil too. And probably a closet cross dresser with a baby chicken f**king fetish.) (No offense to cross dressers. I like you folks. You're fun.)

This is where the awkwardness has come in. We are leasing our home from this insane person. We were supposed to buy it this year. Things over the past two years went from fine to tense to outright hostile, and now he is doing his best to get us removed from the property. And oh yeah, we're not sure he's stable. We're not sure we won't come home to our stuff on the lawn and our doors and windows boarded over.

This year, I poked around with some animal PA rescue/advocacy groups, to see if there is something they could do, but with no luck. Carl and I constantly stew in a soup of our own guilt-I mean, we have visions of late-night rescue missions, with ski masks and horse trailers, where we liberate the poor thing and...I don't know...what? Drop her off at the animal shelter? Spirit her to Canada where she will be taken in by kindly Canadian pony herders? Get her adopted by circus folk?

Wendy and I feed her handfuls of grass and apples (I checked with some relatively sane horse people that I know-Hi, B!-apples are in fact okay for horses) from time to time when chicken f**ker the owner isn't around. I haven't really known what else to do about it without making the already bad situation between us and Mr. Insane more confrontational. And possibly get our cats abducted and made into cat sausage over a fire somewhere.

Well, it doesn't get much more confrontational than a guy wrongfully trying to get my family evicted. Awkwardness solved!

I don't know if you know any other six-month pregnant chicks, but we are totally willing to get confrontational right back. Last month, after emailing and calling a few different entities, I finally emailed the right person at the local SPCA, and a humane society investigator showed up the next day! Like an avenging angel! Well, not really. But still-

HOORAY! JACKPOT!

This benevolent protector of creatures everywhere had a badge and a bucket of reassurance that I had done the right thing by contacting him. He didn't take the pony away to her new life as a little girl's best friend, like I hoped he would, but he did issue a warning and threaten fines and whatnot.

Mr. Insane cleaned the pony stall, put the pony out for a week...

...and then stopped.

*****to be continued*****