I learned the other night I had wrongly assumed that we had purchased an escape artist from Oklahoma. Well, she has escaped a couple of times, but in one case, Miss Lily deserved an apology. I offered it to her yesterday.
It's true she once scaled the goat wire that for months has kept Rambo and Casey perfectly content in their barnyard pasture. I came home one winter day to find that Lily had taken her own personal tour of the Lovestead outside her assigned domain.
She'd made a mess in the barn, breaking open and stirring up a bale of alfalfa. She'd left a horse pile in the back yard after walking through three feet of snow and deciding to turn around and stick with plowed-out trails. I easily tracked her every move---after I put her back in the barnyard enclosure and hooked up the electric fence.
Another time, she took flight and escaped, but it was my fault. I expected horses to have at least a few human reasoning powers. One day, Lily had been harassing and tormenting Casey, who will put up with just about anything. When it was time to put the horses in the barn, rather than coming in her usual first-in-the-barn rotation, she thought it much more fun to pick on Casey.
"Well, don't come in!" I grumbled after three attempts to grab her and slip the halter on her head. "I'll show you. You can just stay outside." I put Rambo in his stall, then caught Casey and walked him to his stall. Just as I was shutting the gate to Casey's stall, I heard a thud and saw a streak race past the big barn doors.
I hadn't shown Lily; she'd shown me. The only object lesson learned was mine. Horses do not reason in favor of humans. Horses reason for themselves and themselves alone. After running at full speed halfway down the lane, Lily realized she'd missed the barn, turned around and came back toward me and the waiting halter. Behind me, the fence brace was hanging in two pieces where she'd gone full speed ahead like a karate chopper.
An hour later we had the fence fixed, and I had reasoned that it was all my fault. From now on, no matter how naughty she was acting, Lily would continue her first-place rotation into the barn.
So, Lily had us set up for the third infraction for which she was unduly blamed. One Sunday a few weeks later, Bill, Kiwi and I headed for Bonners Ferry. Figuring I'd turned the electric fence on often enough to ensure a healthy respect from all horses, I trusted my herd to stay inside their enclosure. When we returned, that's precisely where they were. I felt satisfied that we now could actually leave the premises with no problems.
That confidence was short-lived. As I walked toward the barn, I could see new horse tracks--the size of Lily's lovely hooves--where no horse tracks had been earlier in the day. When the snow's deep, you notice those things. Looking closer, I could see large human boot tracks and small tennis shoe tracks accompanying the horse tracks. They were everywhere. They led into the yard. They led down the lane. I even found them on South Center Valley Road.
Lily had apparently scaled the fence and gone visiting, I surmised. Someone had found her on the road and brought her back. Some clues of what had not happened didn't add up, however. No halters had been moved in the barn. The barn was not messed up. All alfalfa remained in its bales. Plus, I wondered why Lily would go down the road this time when she had hung out outside the barnyard on her earlier outing. Horses generally don't go far when they've escaped their friends.
I've thought about that escape several times and wondered why someone didn't leave us a note or call us to let us know they'd put our horse back in its pen. The mystery was solved the night of Bill's birthday. Lily was innocent. Another horse living about 3/4 mile down the road had escaped its boxstall and come to the Lovestead to visit Rambo, Casey and Lily. Eventually, its owners caught up with it and returned it to its home.
I still can't figure out why they never let us know that they'd been all around our place, chasing a horse, until Monday night's chance encounter with them, but at least we now know our Lily is not a serial escapist.
We've taken precautions, though, for Lily and her barnmates. Yesterday while returning from town, I came upon the Lovestead to see Casey with head, neck and body extended as far over a stretch of goat fence as a horse could possibly stretch without turning a somersault. The grass is growing, and a horse just can't help it when that green grass calls-----on the other side of the fence, of course.
I must explain that we have a two-length gap in our new board fence where we have to wait for the water table to go down before setting a new post. Thus, that stretch has been a concern. Well, no more. Bill, after hearing of Casey's gymnastic grass-eating efforts, brought out the big smooth wire and four metal posts for a temporary band aide.
"If we need more posts, we've got more," he announced after finishing the evening project, which included four strands of sturdier wire to go with those posts. "We can even pound posts every foot if needed."
So, we're hoping to keep Miss Innocent Lily and Mr. Hungry Man Casey inside the enclosure while we wait for spring pastures to dry up from their present spongy state. Another adventure of life on the Lovestead where Miss Lily from Oklahoma has been grossly misunderstood. But Ralph Waldo Emerson said: To be great is to be misunderstood.
And, this week with the revelation of her innocence, we think Lily is a pretty great horse.
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