Attempts to Capture and Tame a Unicorn (30): Too Many Oats

Now I knew she liked oats a lot.  Time and again they had helped to draw her in in one way or another and I had been trying to think of a way they could work a plan on their own for quite some time.

The inspiration for this one came from a party for my Gran’s 80^th Birthday.  It was staged round at her house, complete with a large and, not-too-elaborate, buffet on offer.  There was loads of nice food - crisps, dips, ham sandwiches, egg sandwiches, tuna and salmon (not mixed) too and cheese and pork pies and sausage rolls - all good stuff.

Most people there ate quite a lot, gave themselves a decent feed, but my uncle went way over the top.  I swear he must have had half of what was there.  Back he went, again and again, returning each time with a mini mountain of food on his plate.  First with the savoury, then again with the sweet - drowning the poor pieces of cake in vast seas of cream.

Eventually he stopped getting up.  Finally defeated, he fell asleep for a bit.  At home time, two of his sons had to help him out to the car as he was still semi-comatose.

"What a plan!"  I thought and borrowed a trough from a farmer friend under false pretences, filling it to the top with sweet, sweet oats.

The unicorn duly started to eat them on her arrival - tucking in and burying her nose and mouth deeply, gorging herself on the trough’s contents, clearly surprised and happy to have so much at once, unable to believe her luck. 

And as she ate, I kept it topped up.  I had several bags of oats at the ready to help make sure her stomach would get more and more full.  One bag went in - and these were big bags, sacks really, and she didn’t look like slowing down.  A second, then a third, a fourth… and I was soon out and on she kept going through what was in the trough.  I thought what I had would do her.

Mistaken, I went to get the two extra sacks I’d brought with me just in case.  By the time I got back, the trough was licked clean and we started again, with me hoping each bag would be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

But it never seemed to be.  She picked up the last of the oats with her tongue and looked up at me proudly.  I groaned and started to move the trough back onto the cart I had pulled it out on.