Tadpole Jubilee

Okay there was a switch. The whole Jammies family except Jinxy and the whole Moldy family came down here in our pasture. My mother came back down here too. The Blue family came also and the Betty family.

Wronny Soprano stayed where she was so was so Abby and I were able to have the full-blown smackdown we have been planning for years. We started the smackdown one on one and it went really well and then my daughter Izzy joined me and the tide turned immediately but then Moldy came in on the Abby side and the tide turned back and my mother Belle Pepper came in and then Pebbles put a head in on the Moldy side and all in all it was a top-rated smackdown, certainly the best smackdown in years, but just when it was reaching its peak Maddy the Sheriff of Crazytown raced past with Eo hot on her heels in a state of apoplectic rage.

Now Eo never makes a sound and rules through mind control and spraying the fear on everyone and how you can tell she is in a state of apoplectic rage, as opposed to her usual state of seething rage or her slightly elevated state of simmering rage is that her ears will go back like a horse when it is about to kick someone. Anyway Maddy breezed past us, as they say at the racetrack, and Eo was hot on her heels, with her ears back and Game of Thrones written all over her face in bold gothic type.

A word about Maddy, just one word: crazy. Here is how Maddy operates: when she is up with the bigs she cowers and scrapes and can hardly get a bite to eat. The farmer is constantly having to take her out and give her special food and feed her on her own so that she doesn't get thin as a rail and she is also super picky and often will stand on the milkstand with her special meals picking out the corn from the feeder and then tossing the oats and barley on the floor and when the farmer sees this the farmer's ears will go slightly back like a horse about to kick someone and little puffs of smoke will come out the farmer's ears and then we usually will get to hear one of our favorite speeches, either the "Is This the Thanks I Get?" speech or the "Do You Know How Much Grain Costs These Days?" speech.

But then if Maddy goes in with little goats or even babies she turns immediately from abject coward to world's biggest bully and delights in nothing more than t-boning unsuspecting Nigerians which there aren't very many unsuspecting Nigerians but now and then she finds one. So anyway the farmer thought it would be a good time to put Maddy in with the smalls since there was a big change happening anyway and probably  nobody would notice her etc which we probably never would have what with our excellent smackdown but of course the farmer neglected to consider our fearless leader Eo whose radar goes all the way to the ground and possibly even deeper than that so there is absolutely no way to get under it.

Maddy did not get two steps into our pasture before Eo was on her tail. Elbie and Too, the mini-manchas, joined the parade. We dropped our smackdown and joined.  Even Moldy ran a few steps on her dachshund legs before yelling, "That's Right! You Heard Me!" and lying down to catch her breath. The parade raged over hill and dale, with the mini-manchas' tongues hanging out, and Maddy loping tirelessly - she has a lot of practice running - and after a while we decided to drop out for the hilly parts and catch up on the flat runs, but Eo ran with gimlet eyes, her fury never never dimming, always two steps behind Maddy. NOT IN MY PASTURE.

It was definitely a case of tadpoles' revenge. If you get enough tadpoles you can rout a whale, especially if the tadpoles have a leader like Eo. After about twenty highly aerobic minutes the farmer gave up and opened the gate to let Maddy out, and then closed the gate on Eo, two steps behind.

Maddy turned around when she was sure the gate was tightly closed, and she was probably thinking of saying something, but when she saw the look in Eo's eyes she could not think of any remarks that would really suit the occasion. So she scampered off and the rest of the day was a tadpole jubilee.