My laugh for the day:

Everyone needs at least one good laugh a day to stay healthy. Usually the animals provide my laughs (and no doubt I provide theirs), but tonight it was my friend Janice, owner of Hearts on Noses Potbellied Pig Sanctuary, who gave me my chuckle with the story she told me over the phone (posted here with her permission).

Last night she was lying awake listening to the rain on the roof. Rain on the roof can be very relaxing – but when, like Janice and like me, you own a barn loaded with hay or straw and you provide refuge to a number of animals, it can also sound very, very much like fire. I think both Janice and I fear fire more than any other crisis that might occur on our properties.

And so you get up and check, over and over and over again.

Last night, concerned over some damp hay which had been delivered and could easily ignite spontaneously, Janice lay awake hearing fire. And so, she got up and finally decided to ease her fears by going out to the barn to make absolutely sure all was safe.

And there she was, in the pouring rain, in her jammies, in the middle of the night, about to traverse the rather muddy pasture.......with the only flashlight she could lay her hands on: a flashlight shaped like a pig, with a mouth that opens and closes, and which emits a distinctive “oink, oink, oink, oink, oink” as it lights up the path.

Janice, of course, was concerned only that her novel but noisy form of illumination might wake the piggies. I think I might have been more concerned about neighbours phoning the people with the funny-looking white jackets.

Thanks for the laugh, Janice. Next time, call me so I can catch it on video!