The Great Equine Rescue

It was almost midnight when I turned the corner to my street, meandering down the road at 35ks. I was relaxed and happy after catching a late-night movie, mind on my upcoming weekend. As I idly scanned the road in front of me, it was wildlife and maybe the odd cat I was alert for, so when a decidedly larger figure materialized out of the darkness I swore and stood on the breaks. The horse, standing in the center of the road, threw up her head and snorted at the brightness of my lights, but surprisingly, she stood her ground. I stopped the car about three meters away. I recognized her - the chestnut mare who lived two houses down from me. A small part of my brain registered the open side gate in their yard. Let me tell you a few facts about my street: It's short, and it's quiet, bordered by a half dozen acre blocks and lacking in widewalks or streetlights. There wasn't another set of car lights to be seen from where I'd come to a standstill - but the important part was that just one house down from mine, and four from where the mare stood, was the highway. Apart from the corner the service station is on, there aren't any headlights, and trucks and cars frequently barreled down it taking the 100-kilometer-an-hour speed limit as a loose suggestion. 
I lost the feeling in my fingertips and toes. All I could think of was the horse running onto that highway and getting collected, and it was one situation where I cursed my vivid imagination, which apparently delighted in the opportunity to show me the carnage of what could happen.
I angled my car onto the side of the road so my headlights weren't shining directly into her eyes, and leaving the engine running I slid from the car and approached the horse, offering shaky words of encouragement. I wasn't encouraged myself that my voice came out as a raspy croak.
In hindsight, what I should have done was tried to get around her then made my approach from the highway side of the street, so that if she ran, she was far more likely to move away from the highway. But in retrospect these things are always easy, and I since still fighting down the panic at nearly running her over, all I was able to focus on in that moment was attempting to get her back into her yard before the worst happened.
The chestnut mare, already unimpressed by my attempt to turn her into an equine pancake, decided that an unknown human coming towards her in a dark street was simply the last straw. With a disdainful twitch of her ears she wheeled around and galloped away, straight down the road towards the highway. I admit it, I panicked more than a little when I realized she'd reached it, hesitating slightly and slowing to a canter as her hooves touched the tarmac. I swore, then hollered several times about a loose horse at the owner's house, hoping one of them would appear. When I got no response I leaped back into my car and gunned the two houses down to my own driveway, leaving Hank (That's my car) parked at a crazy angle with the headlights still on. At least I remembered to yank my keys from the ignition, fumbling as I unlocked the front door, my husband long since having gone to bed before I got home.
I practically tackled him awake, apologizing profusely as I explained the situation. As he struggled into a pair of pants and grabbed a jacket, I made a beeline for the cracked plastic planter I'd long since thrown spare dogs leads in, digging frantically until I came up with a six-foot blue braided affair I sometimes used for Maya on the beach. Hastily I Iooped the lead diagonally over one shoulder and around my body. Did the chestnut wear a halter when she was at home? I didn't think she did. I'd seen her with a rug on in her owners' yard, and I'd seen her in full tack when she was riden down the road, but I didn't recall seeing her in a halter in the yard.
She was going to be hard to catch. Again, if I'd been thinking without quite so much panic, I would have grabbed a carrot from home to bribe her with, but I was working with what I had at the time. 
I set off at a run in the direction she'd taken. My tense muscles sighed in relief at the chance to act, and I heard the rumble of James's bike engine behind me. I was greatful he'd though of the bike - two minutes meant a lot of distance for a cantering horse, and she was well out of sight by the time I reached the edge of the highway. I made for the first logical place - I sprinted across the field in between my street and the servo and called frantically to the two staff members inside, asking if they'd seen a horse. They told me they hadn't, and I fumed for a moment as I bolted back outside - to me, not seeing a riderless horse cantering by, even if she'd made it to the other side of the highway, was pretty much akin to missing a truck crashing. But my anger soon dissolved as I made it a short distance away from the station and realized how poor visibility was. Determined not to give up I quickly crossed the wide verge to the highway, moving at a jog and jumping the ditch. A small part of my mind wondered if the chestnut mare had done the same thing. A small white car drove past and I used the opportunity of the headlights to check further up and down the highway - nothing. My imagination kept up a running reel of horror images.
The car drove past me slowly when as got close to the road, then a short distance up did a u-turn and approached. Panting already - half tired and half stressed - I waited for it to reach me. Writing it now, it seems stupid - a car coming towards me on a poorly-lit highway where we've already established the only two witnesses aren't paying enough attention to the road to see a horse go by - but my instincts were telling me this driver knew something important. A woman leaned out the drivers' side window. 
"Are you looking for a horse?"
I nearly keeled over. "Yes, you've seen one?"
The woman's tone was an accurate reflection of my own when I'd nearly collected the chestnut mare. "I just almost ran one over, it was right in the middle of the highway! It took off down that road." She indicated a completely lightless street branching from the opposite side of the highway. "Hop on in, we'll see if we can find it."
I did actually take a moment to consider this. Getting into a strangers' car at the stroke of midnight was probably not the wisest thing I could have done, but again, I went with my instincts. The rattled worry in the woman's voice was what convinced me. She'd definitely just had a near miss. "Thanks." I slid into the passengers' seat and pulled the door closed behind me. Half-way to the branch road I spotted James on his bike, who'd been checking out the cattle paddock alongside the service road. I leaned out of the window and gesticulated wildly for his attention, waving and pointing to the branch road to show him where I was headed. I've no doubt he had a few choice things to say seeing me in a stranger's car, but I felt safe enough with him tailing us. Most of my concern remained on the mare - the road she'd picked was a marginal step up from the highway, but it was just as poorly lit and the speed limit was still 80, which meant most people took it at 100 anyway. I explained the situation to my diver as we coasted slowly, with James occasionally making forays off-road to check out the tall swaths of grass that fringed the wide verges. I think the driver thought I was a bit of a nutcase, running around in the dark after a horse that wasn't even mine, but she seemed eager to help, and it was a hell of a lot faster tracking a horse from a car than on foot.
It was a good fifteen minutes before we found her for the first time. Thankfully she was off the road, standing beside the fenceline to somebody's property with her head up and ears alert.  I got out of the car. Her nostrils flared as she took in me, James on his bike, and the headlights of the car, then she wheeled around the trotted further down the road. I groaned and jogged after her at a distance, telling myself that at least she wasn't headed back towards the highway anymore. So far we hadn't seen another vehicle on our road, something I was highly grateful for.
We tried a different tactic when we caught up with her a second time. James and the driver kept the bike and car further back, lights dimmed. I stood at a distance to the horse, breathing out though my nose and telling myself if I had any chance of catching this horse, I'd have to be calm. 
I began to speak - a constant repetitive babble I kept up without concentrating on what I was actually saying. "There now, good horse, goooooood horse, there now, you want to go home don't you? Come on, cooooome on." I turned my body side-on to her and dropped my head, stealing glances at her from the corner of my eye instead of looking at her directly - making myself smaller and less of a threat in equine body language. Keeping up my chatter, I took baby crab steps towards her, holding one hand out once I was within about five meters. She let me close two more before she threw her head up and trotted off again.
"Argh!" My frustration spilled over. "This is hopeless! She's not letting me near her!" I groaned, bending over and putting my hands on my knees. For a moment I wrestled the feeling of helplessness while my over-active imagination showed me relentless images of what might happened if a car came along. Taking another deep breath and steeling myself, I stood back up and waved my arm at James and the driver, signalling that I was going to try again. In a flash, I realized I was coming at this all wrong. Briefly closing my eyes, I brought a picture to the forefront of my mind, pushing away all the worse-case, disastrous scenarios that I had imagined earlier. I pictured myself leading the mare down the road, her head level with my left shoulder, leading her through her gate and safely back home. I concentrated on that picture, living and breathing it for a few scarce seconds.
You can do this. You CAN do this.
For a while, I really thought we'd lost her. The driver crawled behind me, her headlights the only thing aside from starlight I had to see by. We went so far down the road I began to think we'd missed her. James doubled-back to check, and when I sensed there was no way the mare would have come so far down I turned back as well. When I finally caught sight of her ears through a patch of grass taller than me, I breathed a sigh of relief. I stepped cautiously through the swath of grass in the ditch, waving my hands cautiously in front of me to check for obstructions. The car driver had turned her lights off and left only James's singular motorbike headlight to illuminate the verge. Once I was in view of the chestnut, I resumed the same posture and speech as before. I was sweating after close to an hour of motion, but I was absorbing the details of the night world around me with such perfect clarity I didn't feel in the least tired. My workday exhaustion was forgotten. I was committed, now completely calm, and totally in the moment. I took slightly larger steps, watching from the corner of my eye again. The mare was cropping at the long grass around her, obviously hungry after her midnight jaunt.
"Come on now, I know you're tired. How does going home sound? Come on, come on now..." I was getting closer. Three meters. Two. I breathed steady. I stopped, my sixth sense warning me not to take another step. The mare chomped her mouthful and regarded me with some measure of curiosity. Horses have much better night vision than humans, so I knew she could see me fairly clearly. I was sweaty and grassstained, standing with my shoulder to her, head down and angled so I could peek sideways at her, one motionless hand stretched out to her, palm up.
She took the last two steps towards me, ears pricked forwards, the first sign of acceptance I'd seen. The whiskers on her muzzle brushed my fingertips. I read the moment when her natural caution overtook her curiosity. Her head turned away from me, but I went with her as she took a step, my opposite hand shooting out to anchor in her mane.
It was a critical moment. Grabbed by a stranger in a dark road, her flight reflex denied, she could have chosen fight instead. She could have reared and yanked free. I could have been kicked or bitten - but logic had taken over from my earlier panic. I'd seen this mare being ridden regularly enough, and I was fairly certain that she'd respond to the pressure of my hanging on to her mane.
She did. She twitched an ear at me then went passive, accepting that I was in charge of this situation - in fact there almost had a measure of relief in the moment, as if she'd realized that coming out here for a midnight feast in the great unknown might have been biting off more than she could chew.
As her head lowered a touch, I used my free hand to lift the lead rope looped around my shoulder up over her ears. She flipped her head in surprise when she felt the rope settle around her neck, but I patted her soothingly and quickly held the rope in a closed loop with my other hand. Her head dropped again, and I spent another minute speaking quietly to her and patting her. "I'm going to get you home now. Come on, it's time to go home."
She followed me through the long grass of the ditch. Back on the road, James and the drivers' lights came back on and I flashed a thumbs-up and my biggest grin. The relief had seized me now. I thanked the driver profusely and she drove off, while James provided backlighting from a safe distance as we trudged back up the branch road. I didn't realize just how far we'd come. I kept speaking to the mare, realizing that the vision I'd brought to mind when I was trying to think positively had come to pass. Back on the highway there were three or four cars and trucks passing we waited for before crossing. The steady clop-clop of her hooves on the road sounded loud to my ears in the quiet of the night, but to me, it was the sound of victory.
When we reached her house, everything was dark and silent. I led the mare in and released the hold I'd kept on the rope - I'd led her the whole way with a loop high on her neck, doubting I could see well enough to make a makeshift halter or if my lead rope was even long enough for one. I checked her over as best I could in the low light, hardly able to believe our luck she seemed unhurt. I left a note in the mailbox for the absent neighbors, explaining what had happened, and I followed James's bike home, tired but triumphant.
       

My Disney Theory

I've had a theory about the future of Disney movies ever since I learned of Flynn and Rapunzel of Tangled fame's appearance in Frozen.

About a third of you just stopped reading and went 'WHAT?!' so I'll include a handy screnshot here from Frozen.

The same third are still freaking out and thinking that's somebody's photoshop job, so I will wait... go ahead, grab your copy of Frozen - don't bother pretending there isn't at least one in the house - and check out Anna singing 'For the First Time in Forever'.

Okay, now you either believe me or you knew about this already so I'll get to the point - just how innocent is this little half-second appearance? Not very, in my opinion. It's a tiny little signal of what's to come - it's Disney's version of Iron Man sitting in a bar talking about the Avengers Initiative in the second Hulk movie, in fact. Oh,  and about superheros, it's how Disney plan to compete with Fox, Sony and WB over them. Compete, I hear you ask? Chris, that's idiotic. Disney aren't worried about competing with superhero movies! Their movies are TOTALLY DIFFERENT.

Yes, the genre is different - but don't kid yourself. Everybody is competing with superhero movies these days, because they're so insanely, incredibly profitable. Don't believe me? Have a guess what the most financially successful series is at the box office. It's bigger than Harry Potter, Bond, LoTR, Star Wars, yes, and even Twilight. (Don't laugh - Twilight is in the top ten of highest-grossing movie series!) Yup, that would be the MCU, better known to less rabid fans as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or what the various Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy and pretty much any other Marvel hit you can think of belong to.

So anyway, before we loose ourselves further in Marvel-related ramblings, back to my Disney theory. Why put Flynn and Rapunzel in Frozen? A fun cameo? Well yes, but stick with me. It's the started of a cohesive shared universe Disney will build. If you're a bit of a Disney Nut, I  mean, fan, you're probably aware of the main Disney Theory or at least you know that there have been Easter eggs and cameos by many Disney characters, but that was then, and this is now, and nothing is without a reason.

After watching Tangled tonight, James and I nailed down my theory - that Disney will, after a few more future films, conclude the recent hits with a mash-up movie featuring all the heros we love. James's specific thought is that the princesses are all going to be kidnapped and the princes have to work together to rescue them, and he's pegging Maleficent as the ultimate bad guy. Which I certainly think would explain the extreme marketing job Disney poured into a fairly mediocre movie. But even if it's not the traditional 'rescue the princess' type of deal, you can bet this WILL go somewhere. Watch this space!

The Musical Connection

Music is something that established a deep connection with me early on. Like most kids I began listening to a few of my parent's songs and recording the ones I enjoyed onto a blank cassette tape. (People born after the mid-to-late nineties may have no idea what I just said. That's okay, just stay with me.)
I graduated to songs belonging to my own generation as a teenager, and many a quiet day when my family lived on the boat was passed with my trusty walkman. (No, I never dropped it overboard.)

Music is still a big part of my life these days. Not that I'm at all musical myself in that I can't carry a tune - my husband will confirm this - nor can I play an instrument. Well, I did learn the recorder along with two dozen other forth-graders and I can play a mean Mary Had a Little Lamb. Or is it Hot Cross Buns?

Despite my lack of musical genius, I still have a deep appreciation for a variety of instruments. Sometimes I find myself drawn to a particular song primarily because of one instrument, and one of the earliest examples of this is Bond's 'Explosive'. Prior to hearing this song I'd never really been a huge fan of instrumentals but this one is so wholly electric it's impossible for me not to like. The violins are out of this world.
 

A more recent example is Bastille's Pompeii, one of the very rare songs I didn't like when I first heard it. It's one of the few songs that grew on me, and it happened after I began to listen to the drums. Now it's one of my all-time favourites, and my 'de-stress' song that I play to sooth me when I'm worrying about something.
Be warned, if you're going to watch the music video, there's NOTHING soothing about it. It's quite creepy.

In the case of some songs, the drawing instrument makes up the entire selling point of the song. Such are the trumpets in Jason Derulo's song titled after the instrument itself - I didn't think much of it until the trumpets started to play and then I quite liked it!

 

This one I felt the connection through the music video. A touching story of a bullied boy finding inspiration in falconry and going on to be a wing-suit glider is beautifully portrayed. I do like the song - it's on my driving CD right now - but the appreciation of the music came about because of the clip itself. Rudimental and Emeli Sande make a perfect collaboration here, and what impresses me most about the wingsuit footage used in the video is that's it all real-life footage of an extreme-sports professional, Jokke Sommer, flying through the Alps. It's like magic!  

 

 

Surprise, Surprise

Well, it will probably come as no surprise to most that my first post here is about movies. A huge portion of my interests revolves around movies. Most of all because I'm a sucker for a good story (also a pretty face, pretty scenery, pretty special effects, and the list goes on...) but also because I enjoy the whole moviegoing experience a great deal. Call me old fashioned in this age of [perfectly legal I'm sure] downloads across multiple platforms, but stick me in front of a fifteen-foot screen with sound blasting at me from all angles and the smell of popcorn in the air and I'm one happy camper.
So this year there's a few movies I'm really looking forward to watching, read on for the list... 


#8 - The Hobbit 2: The Desolation of Smaug
The reluctantly courageous Hobbit Bibbo Baggins continues his quest with a band of Dwarfs to avenge their ancestral home against an invading dragon. 

Despite the mediocre tone of An Unexpected Journey, I am still anticipating the second of the Hobbit trilogy. I'm pinning my hopes on sticking a little closer to the source material in this round, as the major problem I had with the first movie was the copious unnecessary extras. It didn't come as any great surprise to me, since the studio decision to stretch the originally two movies into three is nothing but a money-grab. 
Some of my excitement here may be stemming from my loyalty to the LoTR movies. Let's face facts here... Peter Jackson did them brilliantly. Hands-down one of the best book-to-movie adaptions to date, and Sir Jackson couldn't have picked a more beloved or difficult series to translate to the big screen. He acheived so much greatness with the series, iconic now of the entire fantasy genre. The Hobbit could never really hit the same note as the Lord of the Rings, but it ought to have come a lot closer than it did. Work was needed across the board - in characters, story progression, and a much more careful selection of scource material most of all.
Hopefully Desolation will hold a little more true the wonderful story of the book, and time will tell. 


#7 - After Earth
Humans now live on a distant planet, having abandoned Earth to the elements. A father and son duo crashland on our planet while on a peacekeeping mission and have to battle through a now-unfamiliar terrian to safety.

I have mixed feelings about this movie. On one hand, I want to anticipate it if nothing else but for the visuals of Earth as an overgrown wilderness, no logner tamed by mankind. However, you won't find anyone fussier than me when it comes to impressing me with CGI animals. A lifetime of observing animals has tuned me in to how they move and react, and very, VERY few computer generated animals in live action movies have impressed me to date.
It's the story that will make or break this as a great or a so-so movie. On the plus side, it's an original story, and these days you aren't seeing a lot of that, and in itself it can be refreshing to watch a story unfold that isn't estalished already. On the negative, I'm no fan of M. Night Shyamalan's because I find his work tends to be very detached and relies far too much on the supernatural, forgetting to ground itself in real life characters, emotions and settings.
Still, I'll certainly see it, and reserve judgement until after I have. 

#6 - Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
The sequel to the 2010 movie sees young Demigod Percy and his buddies take on a quest to find the golden Fleece in order to save their home.

The first of these movies was good without hitting the epic scale. There was nothing really wrong with it - it had a solid storyline, notable casting, and nice effects - but it's not a movie you're likely to watch over and over. I'm expecting much the same sort of tone to be set for Sea of Monsters. 
So why am I excited to see it? I'm not going to lie. A large part of my excitement over seeing this sequel stems from the fact Nathan Fillion is playing Hermes. Man is a rock star. 

#5 - Riddick
Riddick is back to his old tricks, fighting off hostile aliens and mercanries without batting a genetically enhanced eye.

No surprise here, since most people who know me know that I am a pretty rabid Vindie fan and will watch practically any movie where he appears onscreen. Anti-hero Riddick is one of my favorute characters of his, because he can convey so much with so little. You expect him to be this big tough killer, and make no mistake - he is. Suggest he isn't and you'll wind up hanging by one ankle, tied up with your own shoelaces. But very now and again, Riddick comes out with a line that makes you suspect there's a lot more going on in that skull than kill-or-be-killed.

The direction the third movie as taken seems to have swung away from the grand-scale of number two and instead back to the bare basics of Pitch Black, where we first met Riddick. It'll be interesting to see if he can go back over the same ground without being repetitive, but from the teaser trailers I've been glimpsing of late, I think it's doable. This one goes on the 'definitely don't miss' list. 

#4 - Fast and Furious Six
After a sucessful multi-million dollar hiest leaves them all stupidly rich but high up on the wanted list, Dom brings the crew back together for a last-ditch effort to clear their names. Expect fast cars, big explosions, and fistfights galore. 

I know right - I'm a fan of these? This is the one franchise that tends to cause surprise when people find out I like them. You'll never meet anyone less interested in cars than I am. The Fast series is probably one of the most obviously guy-orientated, and yet I'm hooked. So what's the draw? It's actually been different for each of the three movies of the series I've enjoyed, namely the first, fourth and fifth. I admit that I barely remember anything about the second and have never gotten around to seeing the third. How I can be such a die-hard fan for the other movies is easy, since they all set very different tones. The first sets the scene and introduces bad-boy Dominic Toretto, his sweet-yet-tough sister Mia, and his unlikely best friend undercover cop Brian. The fourth one brings back Dom as a central character, back on the streets and racing on a quest for revenge, and we see Brian start to question which side he should be on when he reunites with Dom and Mia. The fifth one blew the previous installments out of the water as the gang went global and turned master criminal - it was incredibly over the top, yes, but never over-done.
Despite the heavy auto-theme through the series, they keep the human element relatable the whole way through. It might not be Oscar-winning material, but it sure as hell is entertaining. I expect big things from this one - suspend reality for two hours, and don't forget your seatbelt.  

#3 - The Wolverine
Arguably the world's most beloved X-Man is back after the events of X-3, into the fan-favourite setting of Japan. Even if you're not a Marvel Nut, you should know what that means - Mariko, Silver Samuari, and a whole host of fun.

The X-Men trilogy is one of my all-time favourite set of movies. Hugh Jackman is a much-beloved Aussie hero of an actor. However, since this is a follow-up to the Great Big Fat Disappointment, aka, X-men Origins: Wolverine, you wouldn't think I'd have such high hopes for this attempt.
Seriously, I didn't believe it when a X-obsessed friend of mine saw an advance screening of Origins and the overview was: "This movie is nothing but a disappointment. You aren't going to like it." Really, it didn't even compute. Me, not like an X-Men movie? That didn't make any sense at all.
Until I saw Origins, and was witness to the biggest spit-in-eye attitude to any fan of comic-verse Wolverine there could ever be. (I felt like *I* needed an amnesia bullet after watching it.) The best I can say about it is that as always Hugh Jackman delivered a strong performance. I was almost as appalled at the mangling of Remy (That's Gambit, for those of you who aren't on a first name basis with the various X-Men) that was thrown in as an afterthought as I was of Wolverine's character and backstory being butchered.
After the led-down of Origins it might make sense if I was running a mile in the opposite direction at the mention of this movie, but Wolverine has several things in it's favour. Brian Singer is back to direct, who masterfully handled the universe of the first two X-movies before Brett-let's-kill-'em-all-Ratner got his hands on X-3. It's set after the established X-Men movies, not before, making it a lot easier to tie in characters without people scratching their heads and asking 'Shouldn't Scott and Emma be a little less teenage and a little more, um, foetel at this stage of the timeline?' Sure, it could go wrong, but after watching the latest trailer (see below), my hopes are higher than ever. Call me an optimist.  

#2 - Thor: The Dark World
Thor takes on a new breed of alien bad-guys, though not without enlisting the aid of his devious brother Loki and human love interest Jane Foster.

I'm not sure I should really take being labeled 'The Marvel Fangirl' by a coworker as a compliment, but that's how it played out. Thor is another of my favourite Marvel heros, and out of the pre-Avengers movies that have come together to create the Marvel Cinematic Universe his was my favourite. Sure, you have the epic first Iron man that blew it all out of the court, and Capetian America is undeniably heart-wrenching. But Thor had the hardest task - to realistically tie the God of Thunder and his entire world of magic into the more practical stories of the others. (And by practical, I do mean getting zapped with gamma radiation and being turned into a giant green rager, being frozen for several decades, and creating a one-man, flying, wearable armoury out of scrap metal).
Thor was a success not only because of Chris Hemsworth's fitting the role so well, but thanks to the contrast of Tom Hiddleston as Loki. The trickster god is every bit as beloved as Thor himself by fans, myself included. Any movie that has the brothers starring is going to be high up on my list. 

#1 - Epic
A teenager girl is shrunk down into the world of the Leaf Men, the honorable defenders of the forest.

I remember watching the teaser trailer to this during the last Ice Age movie. I literally watched the entire trailer with my jaw hanging open, instantly blown away by the imagery - the scenery is some of the best computer generated animation I've seen in my life. I never outgrew my love of animated movies, having grown up with The Lion King and 101 Dalmatians. Some of the incredible visuals from Epic match the scale seen in another of my favourite animations, How to Train Your Dragon. I'm hoping this can match up to it story wise as well, since just being pretty is going to impress me, but not rock my world. It could get a bit crowded with too many supporting characters, but in just under a month, I'll see if this one can live up to my expectations. 


There's just under a week's wait now for the first of these movies (Fast 6) to be released in Australia, so in the meantime, I think I'll go throw on a DVD while I chop up a weeks' worth of vegetables for my assorted animal pack. Hope everybody is having an excellent weekend, and feel free to shoot me any comments below. 
-CWC