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.
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