Day Two of Prison (also closeup pictures of the maple leaves)

Chrome is so cute!  I'm still letting him out of his pen every few hours to get a drink from the pond and nibble at some grass shoots so he doesn't think he's being abused (I leave him out for a while and follow him around so I can interrupt him if he starts eating the leaves).  In the above picture he was on his way to the pond, stopped and just looked around for a minute before continuing on his way.  :)  I love how the sun is shining off of his body and tail.  I also like the pretty blue sky.

I was busy most of the day working on my new house.  We got the shower installed and finally got to turn the water on to the house for the first time!  Yay!  Tomorrow we move in!  I'm so excited!  I'll be posting an update and pictures as soon as I get the place cleaned up.  It needs the floors swept something awful and there are tools everywhere.

Anyway I was going to take more pictures of Chrome but my dad asked for my help with something so I put the camera up and never took it back out with me.  I did manage to get a few close up shots of the maple leaves.  I took some from each of the different maple trees in the pasture because they all seem to be a little different.  I forget now which leaves went to which tree though... oops.

 I do know this first one is the ones Chrome was eating.  Notice the serrated edges and red stem?  From what I've read the really poisonous ones can be gold or red, so the color doesn't really mean anything.

This is the back side of the same leaf.  Notice the characteristic silver back?

This one is from a different tree.  It had been on the ground a while so the edges are curled and dry and the area around the veins had darkened.  I couldn't find any freshly fallen ones and the limbs were too high to pick one.

This is from another one.  Same shape as the gold, but more of a red color.

This one wasn't directly under a tree, so it could have come from any of them since the wind has been kind of crazy lately.

So I'm pretty sure they are the dangerous ones.... my dad said when I was growing up our horses ate these leaves all the time.  I guess they just never ate enough to get sick.  I don't know.  It would probably be okay to turn Chrome loose.  He probably wouldn't eat enough to get sick (although he seriously acts like maple leaves are pony crack), but penning him up lets me sleep at night, so I'll just keep him up until they all fall.  The trees are already looking a lot more bare.  Once they're all done I will rake them and burn them again so I can let him back out.  I hope you all are having gorgeous fall weather and getting plenty of saddle time!