A Horse, A Dog, Some Farm Equipment, and a Very Large Bird

I went and rode my new horse Burton on Sunday. It was an adventure in communicating with non-humans.

Burton lives on an enormous farm about an hour out of town. 50 other horses live there and maybe 3 people, all of whom are professional staff for the hunt club. Don owns the place (he's a joint master), Dale runs the place (she is a whip) and Barry from Ireland lives there somewhere, too (he's also a whip). Going there is like going back in time.

When I got there on Sunday it was warm -- over 70 degrees -- very sunny and very quiet. Not a soul was there. Don, Dale and Barry were somewhere else, I don't know where. The barn was totally empty, only the old yellow lab who lives in the barn and a baby thoroughbred who was being weaned and was in a stall as a result while its mommy was outside. There was a warm breeze. The crops across the road had been harvested so the earth was brown and smelled good. The big hay rolls were rolled up in the fields next door. All the horses except the baby thoroughbred were outside in the sun. The big locust trees stood guard over the stone walls. The sky was blue. There was no noise except the breeze and the very low radio in the feed room of the barn.

To get out to the field where Burton lives I have to drive a piece of farm equipment called the Gator. It is a green John Deere-type implement. I have only recently learned to drive it and I LOVE IT. Driving farm equipment is way more fun than anyone ever told me and I now think everyone must learn to drive farm equipment or else they haven't lived. I recently told a friend of mine who just had a baby girl that she needed to make sure her daughter learned to drive farm equipment or else I would come out to California and teach her myself.

The Gator does not go very fast but it can go over virtually any type of terrain and has a big bay in the back where you can put 8 saddles (we did that once already) or piles of halters or hay or feed or whatever. It makes farm equipment-type noise and you feel invincible rolling along making Gator noise with the wind in your hair, intent on whatever purpose you are about that requires the Gator. I think pretty much everyone loves the Gator. On the occasions when there are other people at the barn with me, people will say things like, "you could take the Gator, you know."

On this day the Gator was parked near the barn with the baby thoroughbred so I took it and sputtered away over the hill, past the locust trees ad the stone walls to Burton's field with the yellow barn dog running along beside me. The sun was on my face and the wind was in my hair and I could smell the cut corn from across the road and the general odor of horse farm. Burton was sun-bathing in his field and came over hoping maybe I had a treat, which I did. We walk back up the hill in his enormous field to where the Gator is parked and all of his paddock-mates come strolling after us. It was little me leading one horse who was leading another horse who was leading two horses over the hill, etc. I extracted Burton from the field without letting all the other horses out too and we settled back into the Gator.

The yellow seat of the Gator was nice and warm by this time so I sat back and smiled and sputtered off with Burton in tow. Burton walks along behind or next to the Gator. He likes the Gator too. Sometimes he likes to get in front of the Gator while I am driving and then I have to stop so I don't run over him (stupid horse). Mostly he trots along beside it. I wonder how long it takes horses to get used to being lead by farm equipment. I suspect Kona would be petrified of the Gator. It took me a few tries to get used to driving with a lead line in my hands. You have to have enough slack to let the horse turn his head or slow down or move off to the side a little or whatever, but not so much slack that you drive over your own lead line. If your horse got upset by something I suppose you could be pulled off the Gator altogether. Burton is fine though -- only sometimes I think he wishes the Gator would go a little faster. The yellow barn dog was still running along beside us. Girl on farm equipment, horse, and dog all running together over the hills in the quiet sun and warm breeze.

We tack up in the quiet barn (still no other souls around) and ride out the back and head up to the ring. The ring is built on the stop of a hill and from it one can see all across Pleasant Prospect and also across several other farms to the north and to the east. It is a surprising vantage point and you don't realize how high up it is until you get there. Howard County is very hilly. On this day with the warm sun and blue sky you could see across lots of woods as well as cut corn fields and the trees were starting to turn so the woods looked yellow, too, in the yellow sun. Still the gentle breeze blew.

Burton and I walk through the tall meadow grass up the hill to the ring and then suddenly Burton won't go any further and won't go up to the gate. He starts to back down the hill in a not very safe manner. The yellow dog is gone. Burton begins to act worried. I finally realize that there is an ENORMOUS bird sitting on the side of the ring. It was so big it looked like it belonged on top of a downtown monument or something. It had its back to us and was looking over the farms to the northeast with its huge wings spread out the way a pelican does, only it wasn't a pelican. It was brown and definitely a bird of prey -- it was as big as a whooping crane only much thicker and really enormously huge. I guess its wings were out warming itself in the sun. It was so big. It was as big as I imagine the real dodo birds were. It was like an emu, sort of. At its large feet was a deer skull, picked totally clean.

So I got off Burton and persuaded him to come into the ring with me on foot (horses are sometimes braver if the little human goes first, even though they are bigger than the little human and the little human can't do much to protect them. They don't realize that or something. This is a known phenomenon, I'm not making it up). I tried waving my little human arms at the enormous bird but all I succeeded in doing was scaring Burton. So I needed a new tactic. I got as far away from Burton as possible without letting go of his reins and then made shooing noises at the huge bird, as if it were a cat. The bird sat there with its wings outstretched still. It's only response was to turn its head and look at us over its wing/shoulder, as if to say, "yes?" It had a very large beak.

Burton stood stock still and stared at the bird. I was on the end of the reins in front of Burton staring at the bird too. The bird was staring at us. The yellow dog came back from wherever it had been and stood and stared at the bird too. We all stood like this for about a minute in the lovely warm sun and gentle breeze. There might as well have been no other people anywhere in Howard County as far as I could tell. I knew for a fact there were no other humans anywhere on the 212 acre property and I couldn't see any humans anywhere on any of the adjoining tracts of land either.

I was the only human left in the world. It was just me and the animals. I wondered what Davey Crocket would do in a situation like this.

We all did nothing and stood in the sun looking at one another for a while. The bird was a beautiful brown color and moved slowly with no apparent fear. The dog sat obediently nearby, ready to heard the emu-dodo type bird, perhaps, if it suddenly decided to start walking around on the ground (unlikely). Burton watched the bird. Burton knew it was not a fox or a hound but that is the extent of his animal taxonomy so he just stood there mystified. The emu-dodo bird looked at us. Sometimes it turned and looked back out over the fields. Then it would look back at us.

Eventually it flew away. With very long, slow swooping flaps, down off the edge of the arena and low over the cut corn in the neighboring farm.

So that was that. Burton and I rode around in the warm sun and then went back through the tall meadow grass and under the waving locust trees past the stone field walls to the quiet barn. The yellow barn dog came in carrying a rack of antlers from the deer skull the enormous emu-dodo bird had been guarding. They were picked clean too. You could see the entire bone structure of the carapace between the two racks of antlers, all interlaced with tiny bone filaments. You could see the bone structure of how the antlers attached to the skull, which was presumably still up where the big bird had left it. The yellow dog presented it to me and Burton. Burton looked at it intently. I took it and put in the truck of my car. I am going to bleach it and put it in my office with the rest of my natural history collection.

Then it was time to drive Burton back out to his field in the Gator with the dog running beside us and give Burton another treat and watch him roll. For the first time Burton did not walk away as soon as we got there. He stood around with me near the gate and sighed and checked to see if I had any more treats and sighed some more and looked at me. I told him he was very brave about the giant bird in retrospect and he looked at me with his brown eyes as if to say he thought so too, in actuality. After a little while of standing around sighing and blinking in the sun, he walked off to join his paddock-mates. This is about as nice a thing a horse can do to a little human in a field, really. Stick around and socialize when its is not, strictly speaking, required.

So I was there for about 3 hours and spoke only to a dog, a baby thoroughbred, several adult horses, a giant bird, and a dead deer. It was lovely.