From the kitchen staff bringing a bat into our managers’ office to the housekeepers searching abandon cabins for a missing girl—the ranch has been full of surprises this season. Each department has a bit of unnecessary drama that all end in giggles.

One morning we Housekeepers were simply restocking the van of towels and necessities for the rest of the day. We were minding our own business when we get a call over the radio. It’s our boss.

Background story: There was a 16-year-old girl who went missing a few days ago. She disappeared a few miles from our ranch so there was a rumor that she could be hiding on our property. So what does our boss want us to do? Go and find her.

As a housekeeper we must do what we are told. So we put our real duties to the side and grabbed our bear spray and headlamps. There are a few abandon cabins near us so we took our house keeping van along the dirt road to go and hunt for this girl.

Now, if I’m being completely honest I did not want to find her. Sure, it would have been a great story but what the heck are housekeepers suppose to do if we found a girl who was taken or just didn’t want to be found? We didn’t find her. But the police finally found her in the sage bush—she was a runaway.

The wranglers like to have some fun in the barn too. They paint the hooves of horse’s different colors; paint stars on the sides of their neck or even bread their manes. It’s pretty clever if you ask me. One wrangler likes to tell the children that the horses have rabies. It’s pretty funny when a child overreacts on a pony.

In the kitchen there are a bunch of towel snapping. People are left with welts or giant red marks. But it’s all fun and games. But if you can’t handle the heat aren’t you suppose to get out of the kitchen? I think that’s right.

Just recently the maintenance crew and housekeeping has developed a prank war. The housekeeping team drives two different vehicles and maintenance decided to switch out the keys. So needless to say after a long day the housekeepers wanted to get off work and we couldn’t even start our cars. I will admit we didn’t even notice that the keys were switched. We got maintenance back by putting a screwdriver through an apple and leaving their keys stuck in the middle of it. When you only have 5 seconds to come up with a genius plan—you just gotta deal with what you have.

The pranks give us something to laugh about at the end of a stressful day.