To anyone silly enough to believe that critters below ‘mammal’ do not have individual traits and personality…I offer you…a fish. Renji.
When they were only minnows, and all 12 fit under one rock in the pond, they were different. One orange/white one (kohaku) was often missing from the pack.
As a fingerling—who was the first to find that food collects in the skimmer basket if it escapes? At feeding time, the lot would be chasing food on the surface. Renji would be in the skimmer basket stuffing himself on what they missed.
When the crew wakes from their first winter—who’s the first out? Renji.
When there’s anything new in the pond, the others hide or at least hang back. Who’s the first to investigate it? Renji.
We named him after the Bleach character who’s almost the hero—the guy who’s often the first to discover trouble.
So yesterday, Jane yells from her window that there’s an emergency at the pond. I look and there’s a fish stuck on the 6 foot diameter floating sunscreen that keeps them safe from winter predators. It’s come a windstorm, the thing has been floating this way and that, and there’s a fish lying on it.
I run out, and of course, it’s Renji: apparently he got on the lee side of the drifting screen, and rather than going under the oncoming screen, in shallow water, decided to jump it.
Oops. There he is, and we don’t know how long he’s been there, but he’s breathing: the fabric surface is mesh, and he’s in a puddle, lying on his side. I can’t find the damn pond net. I get the rim of the screen and tip it up as Jane helps me remove it. Renji slides down it and back into the water, for, I hope, a long rest and quick recovery.
Of all quirky ways to get stuck, that’s one we never figured, and thank goodness we were home when he did it.
Screwball fish!
Lol! I was a guest—offered a turn on a horse that mostly was being led about with small children; ha. I was college-age. I was wearing a dress, but it had a full skirt, and it was good friends, so what the heck. I climbed up, and they asked was I ok riding. I said, oh, sure, no problem.
They didn’t tell me it was a cutting horse. It turned out it was uncle’s cutting horse, and they hadn’t asked permission…
A small child ran past, just a flash of white, and said horse declared he’d had enough of the party: he teleported sideways—faster than any horse I’ve ever been on. I’m careful how I set my feet in stirrups on a strange horse, and sure enough, I started to fall backward and to the left—cleared the right stirrup and started to go off, but my heel snagged the rounded end projection of the saddlebow [the raised front part of the saddle, next to the saddlehorn]—and held. The horse is in full career across the yard, I’m holding on upside down (in a skirt) by one heel on the far side of the saddle, and by the reins and a fistful of saddleskirt on the hither side.
I was in better shape in those days. I figured (as the horse headed for sundown) well, if I can do a sit-up and get upright, he and I can part company in a safer way, so I started hauling myself up, with, mind, the family picnic trying to head him off, and the horse dodging and lurching with the uneven load, and me trying not to lose the one good leverage I had, my heel. I hauled and I doubled up and hauled, and got upright-er, and could reach the saddlebow with a hand, and got my leg across as far as the knee, and the the rest of me up.
By the time the family caught up, the horse had reached a fence it wisely decided not to jump, and I had set myself to rights.
Unfortunately (or fortunately) nobody had a camera.
Yup, cutting horses appear to be immune to Newton’s laws of motion; their speed and directional changes completely independent of mass and acceleration.
When I was growing up, the older descendants of the pioneer families were still old-fashioned cowboys and there’d be an annual fall roundup of their cattle from the public grazing up in the mountains. Nearly every year, once or twice they would find this one 50-60ish rancher’s horse and backtrail to find the gent knocked cold on the ground under a tree limb that he had discovered coming around a blind corner at a full gallop. I can’t remember if it was him or one of his fellows in the 1960’s who had a substantial holding in Pacific Power & Light, a handy pole on the main line within 50 feet of his house and refused to hook up to the electric. You could always tell one of these old cowboys, the big problem was telling them much!
😆 They still move cattle on the road near Yellowstone—and we’ve got the pix to prove it.
I’m a city-boy with country relatives. I don’t know how to ride, but I’d love to learn. — So I love hearing about all the shenanigans the horses will do. I *expect* animals (mammals, at least) to be smart and have personalities. So hearing horses will pull practcal jokes — that’s fantastic. I wouldn’t be scared of a horse, but I would have to make sure the horse follows me, instead of trying to be boss.
I have a 28 year old quarter horse mare who is the kindest, most sane horse you could ever imagine. She was my first horse and as you can imagine, I didn’t know as much as I thought I did. I discovered from her and others that most horses do have a great sense of humor and they are so happy when you get it. When I had her at my home instead of boarded as she is now, she used to love scaring the dickons out of the barn cat. She liked to sneak up behind him (yes I mean sneak) and touch his tail. He would jump up two feet in the air and race away and I could tell she was just laughing at the whole thing.
My Cody didn’t like vets. I sent two out to give him his shots, and he put them over the fence, shots ungiven. The next time I came out—he tried it on me, charged me from the back of the pasture. He was new. I thought, if I run, I’ll never be able to manage him—so I stood my ground, and as I thought he would, he just missed me: I pulled a bullfighter move, grabbed his mane and tried to bounce up to his back, but I was just not going to make it, since he started pitching and bucking and crowhopping. So I just held onto his mane and tucked up in a ball, which put over a hundred pound weight hanging off one shoulder. He pitched. He bucked, he put on his show. When he calmed down, I untucked, I put my feet down, and stood there and petted him. He snorted a few times and sighed a big gusty “You got me” sigh and was my horse from then on.
But the farrier, he worshipped from ‘hello’, and the farrier could give him his shots with one slap of his hand on the neck, leaving the needle in place, then connect the injection vial, and Cody never missed a beat eating.
I got an emergency call from the guy who owned the farm where I boarded: Cody’d stepped on a nail, had a board attached to his foot—dangerous business—the nail going right back up out the hoof. I called the farrier, and we converged on the place: we got Cody calm and extracted the nail. So he’s doctoring Cody’s foot, and here comes the farmer’s toddler—walks right under the ticklish part of Cody’s belly with all this going on, and Cody never even twitched. Same horse that put the vets over the fence 3 months ago. Children have special ‘passes’ with horses. I’ve seen kids do things that a horse would never tolerate from an adult.
re: free passes for kids around horses, not always! A rancher I knew in the Sun Valley area (real rancher, he actually lived in Carey) had a horse damn near kill his 4 year-old daughter. She suffered extensive facial and skull fractures. By all anyone could tell, she did nothing in particular to earn it, other than walking behind the horse. It was pretty grim, she was still having surgeries a year later.
One problem is that a horse’s vision is kind of butterfly-shaped around its body: blind spot in front, blind spot behind, and if something pops into existence out of those spots—it scares the daylights out of the horse. So sad about the little girl.
CJ: Brenda Clough gives you a mention over on Book View Cafe this morning. It’s about halfway down the page on her Beowulf sock page. http://blog.bookviewcafe.com/2011/04/14/sock-it-to-me-beowulf-10/
Actually—not quite accurate: I have been known to pop an unsuccessful try in the drawer for years, and then when it jells enough, pull it out when I’m needing a project. Cyteen was ‘in the drawer’ for about 5 years. And I never did use much of what I originally wrote.
We had a big 3/4 thoroughbred mare with a chancy temper and my spouse and my mother looked up in horror one morning to see my oldest, then three years old, pounding enthusiastically on her scarred and arthritic right rear knee yelling “NICE HOSSY”. She stood there with a long-suffering expression on her face. You just never know when toddlers and critters get together.
While in college and just after I worked with a “Riding for the Handicapped” and a “Riding for Emotionally Disturbed Children” program. With competent (knowledgable) riders on their backs the “school horses” could be a handful, but put a child with cerebral palsy on horseback and it was a whole different proposition. Children with cerebral palsy have little muscular control and look to be wildly flailing their arms and legs. The school horses would circle the paddock at a sedate walk and could be trusted to go where pointed. Sometimes as instructor I couldn’t figure out which “instruction from the child” that those horses were responding to, but somehow the rider-horse pair would work out an accomodation that just plain worked. After about 20 minutes of rider flailing, their muscles would relax and then we would be able to progress to gentle jogs, slow-motion pole-bending, and circles on command. These school horses would only see these riders once a week, so it wasn’t training to a specific rider. The horses just could tell what the child wanted and do it. A school horse might have 20-30 riders a week of all different abilities. This wasn’t equitation, just a means of physical therapy, trust building, and an opportunity for the children to do something that gave them some control over their own mobility. When the children graduated to NO volunteers walking next to their horses, you should have seen their smiles and the real feeling of accomplishment they gained from the activity.
Many years ago we had a 27lb. Maine Coon Cat (not fat, just BIG) whose favorite thing was to lie on his back and have his belly rubbed hard by a human foot. One day neighbors out riding stopped by. We were in the field talking when Zeke wandered over looking for a belly rub. Horse obliged with his nose. Zeke on ground eyes closed in purring ecstacy. Horse tried to roll cat over, Zeke’s eyes opened wide and he took off like a shot. Zeke totally shocked, horse *very* pleased with herself. You can’t tell me animals don’t have expressions! 😉
Lol!—
Me: dressed in white for cocktail party. But dropping by to feed Cody, trying to stay white, I did notice something odd (I thought) about the perpetual crack in his left rear hoof. It was Friday; if I was going to need to call the farrier, I needed to see that—so, trying to be extra careful, I asked him for that foot.
Remember that horses see in a ‘butterfly’ pattern, ahead and behind being blind spots? I’m back there, with one hoof lifted, being careful of my clothes. It was a windy day. That white skirt blew up, and scared him, and I got a hoof in the ribs that sent me rolling across the lot to fetch up against the far fence, about 15 feet. He was real apologetic when I got up and limped back to him. Horses live very much in the Now, as grazing animals need to, and the Now said “white-flappy-thing going for my rear and something’s got my foot.” [Horses do believe in ghosts.] So I couldn’t blame HIM for being stupid.
I had some little clean-up to do before I got to that party, and I was breathing very gingerly for days.
Ouch, yet understandable from the horse’s point of view.
That horse therapy program for kids with CP (or other issues) sounds wonderful.