Well. Penny had a bit more about her than Mel had initially thought. She’d lay money that skirt had been new, and probably cost a lot more than everything Mel was wearing, including her boots, which had been an investment she’d been forced to make last winter when her previous ones had finally fallen apart. Initially she’d come across as the type of person Mel privately catalogued as ‘more money than sense’ and who never came within a million miles of a puddle of mud, despite her charming photographs on the internet.
Now though—some of the gilding had come off and glimpses of a different Penny were showing underneath. One that made Mel a lot less tense, as they leaned on the gate and looked at the animals in the field with Basil.
“They’re a bit of a rag-tag bunch,” Mel told her. “They come in and if I’m lucky I can find them permanent homes. Otherwise, they stay here.” She gestured at Basil, who was now checking the feed trough to see whether he’d overlooked any breakfast. “He’s a case in point. He came to me as a piglet that had been sold as a micro-pig, and been bottle-fed. He, obviously, isn’t a micro-pig, so they didn’t want to keep him. Understandably, as they lived in a three bedroom semi.”
Penny winced and Mel nodded. “People don’t think,” she said. She gestured to the pair of alpacas in the corner, who were giving them worried looks. “Darius and Georgina have been here about six weeks. Again they were bought as babies. Their owner became afraid of them as they got bigger and didn’t handle them much. Darius is very bossy and she ended up hitting him a lot. It’s going to take them ages to trust humans again. I might be able to find homes for them if I can ever manage that.”
“What about the pony?” Penny asked, gesturing.
“Jamie. He’s a miniature Shetland. He’s in his thirties and has bad feet and a terrible temper. You can’t turn your back on him, else he’ll take a chunk out of you. He’s best friends with Dan, the donkey…he’s in the field shelter I think. They’re a couple I definitely won’t be getting rid of.”
She pushed off the gate and turned towards the second barn. “There’s another field over the back where the goats and sheep live, and the chickens. I have a lot of small animals, too, that are mostly inside this morning. I’m working to have more outside pens for them, but time’s an issue. At the moment I rotate them in and out.”
She led the way inside. The cool quiet, with the animal smell and the small noises of creatures shuffling their bedding about welcomed them and calmed her anxieties as always. The guinea-pig tribe were the first to notice them and began squeaking furiously. Penny rushed over to the boy’s pen—one of the large stables—and began making excited cooing noises.
“Can I go in?” she asked. “They’re soooo cute!”
“Yes, sure. I’ll get their food, I’ll only be a sec.”
By the time she returned, Penny had settled herself on the chair Mel kept in there for just that purpose and was cuddling Picasso, the friendliest of the group. Mel joined her and shook the feed into their trough, and Picasso abruptly departed to join the scrimmage, jumping down from her lap to the floor.
“They get dry food in the morning and then I give them vegetables in the afternoon,” Mel explained. “I’ll carry on feeding, if you want to look round?” The girl-pigs next door were squeaking loudly too.
“Oh, yes! Sorry! I’ll come too.” Penny got up and followed her out of the door. “They are so gorgeous, I don’t understand how people can get rid of them.”
“Usually it’s things like house-moves or finances, with small animals. Dogs and cats too, I suppose.” Mel said. “The rabbits are a bit different, they sometimes come in because they’ve bitten a kid; and that’s usually because the kid has been mauling it. Rabbits aren’t really children’s pets, although everyone seems to think they are. Too bad-tempered, ‘specially females.”
Penny pulled a face. “Do you rehome many?”
“I do okay, so long as I can let people know about who I have available. I try not to take dogs and cats if I can, because they quite often need housing separately, at least for a bit, and the dogs all need walking twice a day, more if possible; and I just don’t have the space, or the time. I’ve got a couple of volunteers who come up for a few hours each week, but it’s not enough.” She paused to scoop feed into the correct buckets.
“Hang on, I’m counting…,” she passed one to Penny. “That’s for the lady-pigs, next door to the boys.” Penny went off with it and very competently opened the stable door, poured the feed into the trough and retreated without standing on anyone, or, unusually, any pig-egress.
They worked their way along the row of stables via the female and male pens of rabbits. Penny insisted on feeding them too, until halfway through the second stable she began sneezing violently as she cuddled Dopey, a Netherland dwarf with a missing ear. She looked rather like a rabbit herself as she wrinkled her nose to sneeze, and Mel found herself liking her more and more when she didn’t put Dopey down straight away but finished fussing him and then placed him carefully in a space at the food trough.
“How often do they go outside?”, she asked as they came to the end of the row.
“There’s a long pen at the side of the barn and each stables has a pophole out into it,” Mel told her. “I want to break it up into smaller pens, but that’s one of the things I haven’t had time to do.”
Penny nodded. “I see. And that’s what you’re trying to raise funding for?”
“Among other things.” Mel returned to the feed bin to make up the goat food and then remembered she’d already done that before Penny arrived. “I need to employ someone else, really. There’s just so much to do and not enough people with time to volunteer.”
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