Bom Bom puts his foot down

When last we saw our unwilling hero, he was suffering the discontent that comes of unpleasant society. Incarcerated with an abrasive and ill-tempered newcomer by circumstances beyond his control, our diminutive star pleaded for clemency.

Yeah, ok, Bom Bom wasn't happy stuck in a stall with Sammy. I knew this.

Today I began the daunting task of digging out the barn -- inside, not outside -- from the trials of the past week. Ponies and goats and sheep and chickens...oh yes...lots of chickens...everywhere. It was a mess.

First, I unsealed and opened doors. Phew. Fresh air. Chickens O.U.T.

Next, I separated the goats and sheep. Their makeshift arrangement was not working -- I couldn't reach the sheep.  Now the sheep are in a small, but separate pen at the end of the aisle in front of Thyme and Tyche's stall. The goats have the sheep's big stall with access to that paddock -- which was theirs in the first place anyway, before the sheep somehow displaced them.

At this point I had to go pick up the 12-year-old and run some errands.

It was getting dark when I got back, so the first job on the agenda was to get the chickens back IN. The point there being that I was in the barn for several minutes before I heard squeals coming from Thyme and Tyche's stall. Thyme and Tyche are not squealers, but Tigerlily is and she spent the past week incarcerated with the mother and daughter pair. That was not really a big deal though. Those three have been a stable turnout group for a long time and all three get along pretty well and have even been stalled together before. So I walked back to their big double stall at the end to see what might have gotten Tigerlily upset.

Everybody looked ok.  Thyme wasn't beating on anybody. Tyche was fine. Tigerlily was fine. Even our miserable hero Bom Bom looked ok.

Bom Bom?

WTF

That's right. Bom Bom was in Thyme's stall with Tyche and Tiger. And I didn't put him there.

If you squint at this iphone picture, you can see him standing at the stall gate in front of Thyme. The wall on the right side of the photo separates Thyme's stall from Bom Bom and Sammy's stall. That wall is a couple of inches taller than Bom Bom. Without a measuring tape, I did some rough calculations. The wall is made of 6 stacked 2 x 8's. That makes it around 44" tall. With a couple of inches of bedding on the floor of Bom Bom and Sammy's stall, that makes it at least a 3'6" jump to get over the wall. From a standing start. By a pony who's not even that tall himself.

Either Bom Bom is an athletic superstar or he was a lot more desperate to get away from Sammy than I suspected.

And just so no one worries, we did give our hero a thorough once over to make sure he didn't hurt himself. We couldn't find any problems. I'll keep an eye on him for a few days, but I think he's ok.

He also got his clemency. Sammy went into a small stall by himself, and everybody else got reshuffled.

Ponies. Sheesh.