Life is Precious
About two years ago, I used work on an equine ranch, where I fed and handled horses every day from sunrise until sunset in exchange for my rent and a little spending money. I believed that living and working on the ranch had been the hardest experience of my life, but it was one of the most rewarding jobs I have ever done. My coworkers and I work rain or shine; we worked in knee deep mud with sweat rolling down our foreheads, and down our backs from the boiling hot sun. Life is unpredictable; you never know what is going to happen. The unexpected happened last winter. I had pressed the snooze on my alarm clock at six o’clock in the morning so that I could stay in my warm bed just for an extra few more minutes. Before the alarm clock rang again, I opened my eyes and lay in bed with an uneasy feeling in my gut. I knew something was wrong about what is going to happen. I heard one of my co-workers, Ricardo, getting out of bed as he yelled out to me to get out of bed. I slowly rolled out of bed, changed out of my nightclothes into my work jeans and an old t-shirt. I pulled on my mud boots and then walked outside. It was pouring, as it had been for weeks, and the ranch was extremely muddy and wet. I went on to my normal routine; which was to feed all of the current show and pregnant horses in barn. Ricardo drove the tractor and trailer sacked with bale of hays out to feed the horses in the upper pasture. After I was done feeding all of the horses, I went out to check on all of the pregnant mares in the barn to see if we had any newborns and to my surprise there were a set of newborn twins that arrived a couple weeks early. I went out and set up a stall with fresh straw for the newborn foals. I could tell that they were less than an hour old—they were wet, warm and slimy. Their legs wobbled as they tried to walk, the twins were so small that I was able to carry one under each arm. The mother followed me from behind and pushed me with her...