The Parable of the Horse’s Mane

(I thought I had a purloined photo of a horse but it turned out to be a little cow. It’ll do just fine to give your eyes something charming to look at when you look up from reading).  The story is something like this:

A farmer had a problem with his old plow horse.  It seems each day when Farmer went out to hitch Horse to the plow, he found that a bird had nested in the poor animal’s mane!  Farmer carefully moved Bird to a more appropriate venue – more convenient for him and safer for her.  But every day Farmer was obliged to repeat the entire ritual before he could begin his chores.

Well, this went on for a week until Farmer was getting dangerously close to wit’s end.   When his chores were done for the morning, he decided to head up to his neighbor’s for some advice before there were any delicate little eggs to work around.  Neighbor, in his customary, neighborly way explained his Great Uncle Clarence’s sure-fire solution to just such a predicament:  simple bread yeast, liberally sprinkled and worked into the mane!

Farmer thanked his neighbor and set off to get the job done. That night he got the yeast out and took care of the sprinkling and the working in and then settled in for a good night’s sleep.  The next day, he was flabbergasted and pretty tickled to find his bird-free and nestless steed,  right as rain and ready for the plow!  As soon as his chores were done, Farmer all but ran to Neighbor’s to tell him the news and to inquire as to how such a thing worked.

Neighbor smiled and nostalgically spoke the wise words he’d so often heard from Great Uncle Clarence:

“Yeast is yeast and nest is nest and never the mane shall tweet!”