Hi gang, this month I’m passing along a letter I received from a real “Southern Gentleman”, a Missouri Fox Trotter by the name of Smokin’ Joe, aka, Smokey. Smokey is a year older than I am, 27, and is a seasoned mountain horse. I spent the winter with him and have respect for his gentlemanly manners. We had some good times when the youngsters were busy elsewhere! Fly season is in full swing and Smokey has some comments about fly masks.

Hello Charlie. I miss our leisurely walks around the pasture. They are fondly held in my memories.

I would like to make some comments on humans and their thinking processes. I think some of them seem to be very dense. I have two humans in attendance at my pasture, as I’m sure you remember, and the way they work is really remarkable. It is a wonder that some humans have survived in this world as long as they have! Not that I think mine fit completely in that category but they have their moments! LOW (Lots Of Whinnies)

What happened was so frustrating and I want to share it with your readers. About 2 months ago, the female human who is there most of the time, got out the fly mask. Well, it went just fine for a while. The mask went on at the morning feeding and came off at the evening feeding. My eyes are light blue as I’m a medicine hat and the skin around them is white. The sun bothers my eyes and so I tolerate my mask for the sunshade effect. I can’t say I exactly like it but it has its good points.

After a couple of weeks when the flies started getting bad I had a real problem. One morning the female human put the mask on and she shut in several flies! I was tossing my head and nodding it all over the place hoping she would see what was going on. She looked right at me and just walked away after a few seconds. That was one of the most frustrating days I have ever spent!

I finally got the buggers smooshed because I kept rubbing my face on my knee. Next day, same thing! I finally started getting the hang of smooshing the flies early on but there was another problem with the mask. The human didn’t tighten it enough and the bugger flies crawled in! What’s a horse supposed to do in this situation? How could I get her to listen to me? “There are flies in here!” I kept shouting at her but it didn’t do any good.

One day she finally didn’t put the mask on. She could see the dirt marks that were from rubbing my eyes and just left it off one morning. Whew, I thought that it would be better then. It wasn’t, because the flies were worse than ever and the sun was hard on my eyes.

Sometime later, the male human came over with her and told her he was going to put the mask back on. She told him that I would nod my head and she thought the mask was rubbing my eyelashes. He went ahead and put it on. He got a couple of flies inside. I wanted to scream! Then he started looking around and saw what the problem was. He cleared the flies out, tightened the mask tight enough so the flies couldn’t get inside and no flies! So much better!

I hope this can help some of the humans out there to make sure the flies don’t get shut in the mask!

Thanks Smokey for the story. I’m sorry to say it but I had a great laugh. I hope you can laugh about it now but it must have been rough going through it.

Take care, and be sure to send in your stories!
Charlie Horse