Wilma’s personality fills a room.
People come to visit her, always bearing gifts—an old lettuce butt, an apple core, a carrot.
She sleeps under a pile of hay; it’s several feet high now. The mound rises and falls with her breath. This they find enchanting. She hears them coming and pokes her head out just enough to inspect the offering without compromising her warmth. Clearly, it meets her approval.
She snorts and whinnies, and they stroke the course black hair on her broad shoulders. She turns onto her side, gently lifting her leg in hopes of a tummy rub.
I go in search of the ferrets, trying to mask my jealousy. “What’s the matter, pup?” I hear my mom say as I wander towards the tack room door. “There’s love aplenty.”
“Plenty of love to share,” she persists. I continue to look for the ferrets.
“You know pup, I love you to the ends of the earth,” she says, one hand on Wilma’s belly and the other beckoning me to join them. “Don’t you know this by now?”
I stop to consider it. Then I remember, the earth is round; it has no ends. I run to momma.
Walks with Sierra 