Living in the County

I find myself often feeling lucky that I live in the county. Within walking distance from our current house we can see sheep, llama, horses and some chickens. We can get very close, pay no admission fees and see these animals in their somewhat natural habitat instead of part of an overall show.

Oftentimes, our rides home entail a few extra twists and turns just so that we can slowly ride by the sheep and the llamas down the street. We also have horses that live both behind us and two houses down the street from us. So often we will see horses walking up and down the street which prompts quick relocation's from current playthings to the picture window in the living room just to look out. One neighbor we know rather well and she will sometimes see the girls outside and come into the driveway to chat and so that the girls can see the horse named "Q". Of course, he doesn't look nearly as large in the picture window as he does right next to us in the driveway with his saddle on, bit in mouth and rider on top. It tends to intimidate the girls outright. And I can understand that, not being terribly comfortable around large animals myself.

Well this morning as I was in the basement doing laundry (a whole other post in itself...) Gary opens the door and asks "have we ever had a horse in our yard..." Of course in the midst of my spray and wash, wisk and color separation I had to do a momentary "huh" moment before I came tearing up the stairs to see what he was talking about. Sure enough in the back yard near the swing set and between some of the Little Tikes plastics in the yard was a very large brown horse with a coat on (okay more like a plaid blanket with a strap under his belly), bit in mouth and looking very nervous. We could hear trucks, ATV's and people yelling coming through the woods behind our house in search of the animal. They finally located it (since I didn't get a birds eye view to distinguish gender) and tried to corral it in while in our yard. But no one had taken the end of our driveway as possible exit to block so of course that is where the horse bolted for and we saw a quick run up the hill next to our house of the horse up the street.

Strangely enough, it seemed like it was trying to actually get back to it's house because it did head down a long driveway which does head towards the stable. And we saw more flashes past our house, driveway and up the street as the people tried to follow after it.

I hate to disappoint you and say I don't actually know if they did get it back but since I haven't heard any more loud voices in the woods, no more ATV's and most importantly no more big horses in our yards I think that it was successfully returned.

But, I don't think we would necessarily see things like this in other parts of Massachusetts.