Houston, we have poop!

Editor's Note: Commedienne Pam Stone writes her column for The Tryon Daily Bulletin twice each month from her office in the "Unabomber Shack" on her Gowensville farm. Want a chance to respond to this column?
Go to Pam’s blog at www.tryondailybulletin.com.
Yes, I was aware this title might raise an eyebrow or two... read on, it will all make sense.
Having spent something like 20 years on the road touring as stand up comics, Paul and I know what it is like to go out for New Year's Eve. It's the big "money gig" of the year for any comedian, generally earning triple what one would normally make, simply for one night's appearance. I've been in front of restive, drunken, patrons, five minutes until midnight everywhere from San Francisco to Atlanta. I've jumped off stage in Chicago, five minutes after midnight, to grab a cab to O'Hare to catch a flight to London. And each one of those nights, as I reapplied make-up between shows with a trowel and 'Spackle,' I would say to myself in the mirror, "I cannot wait to just stay home for New Year's!"
That fervent wish came true when Paul and I moved, fulltime, to South Carolina in 1999. New Year's became a gloriously mundane tradition of sprawling on the couch, with terrier bookends and a cat on each lap, in front of a roaring fire and Dick Clark on the television. We'd never, ever, have to go out on New Year's again!
Funny how naive some folks can be.
This year found us indeed out, not only in the wee hours of New Year's but the following night as well. With a very sick Mini-mule. Some of you might recall an earlier column I wrote entitled "Lionel the Mini-Mule" which described how Paul discovered the ancient, abandoned, fellow at his nursery. We brought him home and tended to his parasites and neglected hooves and were pleased that he had had a lovely year of Mini-mule bliss living among my other horses and, in particular, Moose, a 27 year old draft horse. Now he lay before us, as the effects of the injected pain-reliever, Banamine, wore off, beginning to writhe and thrash with the pains of colic.
Winter sees a lot of colic cases, particularly in older horses with a slower digestive system. Like people, horses don't feel particularly thirsty when it's freezing outside and the food they eat, without the necessary fluids, can become an impaction inside their intestine. As their throat is a one-way street, there is no relief from this distress and they become agitated, rolling and, the fear is, "twisting a gut." At the age of 25, Lionel was no candidate for surgery and the vet's exam revealed a 'displacement' inside, not good, but moving gut sounds, which was good.
Twice was inserted a long tube down his nose to his stomach which was pumped with a bucket of water to see if we could flush something through but to no avail. Not sure if there was indeed a twist, we were in a dilemma: put him down now to avoid any unnecessary suffering, or try a last ditch effort: hook him up with an IV to fill him one last time with fluid while keeping him comfortable on the banamine. By the morning, if there was no movement, we would put him down. What was heartbreaking was that each time the pain was taken away by another injection, he was completely at ease with bright eyes and a braying welcome. It was easy to kid oneself that he was just fine.
Throughout the night, Paul and I traded off checking on his progress. His last shot of banamine would wear off by around 3 am. The wind whipped up and the air was brittle. Walking through the crunching frost of the paddock at 3:30, Paul saw him peering comfortably out of his deeply bedded stall, Moose standing sentry by the open door, dozing. The beam of the flashlight, flashing within the stall and along the ground revealed what was possibly Mini-mule droppings although Moose appeared to have stepped right in the middle of them, flattening them out, so it was difficult to tell who was the owner. At 5 a.m., it was my turn and with a nod towards the Saint Francis statue calmly surveying the fields from the front yard, and a quick prayer under my breath, I ducked through the apple orchard and opened the paddock gate. At first, I only saw the pale outline of Moose, standing nearby, and then Lionel poked his head around his buddy's shoulder and with a shuddering bray, welcomed me from both ends.
Some people treat themselves to a champagne toast on New Year's. Others go out dancing. Still others cram themselves into Times Square. But nothing, nothing, I tell you, is as glorious as the sight of Mini-mule poop at 5 a.m.