Houdini and Okie

Harry Houdini, in 1899, decided to stop doing traditional magic
and instead concentrated on escapes. He created and performed several daring and scary escapes. His career took off.

Just the other night, The Oklahoma Horse
decided that the grass was greener on the other side of the fence.
Okie created and performed a scary escape.

Okie gave his family a really bad scare.

Last Thursday i had a lot of late afternoon errands to run.

When i got home, it was dark, so i put on my chore jacket

and got the Yorkie-poo, Stella,

and the cocka-poo, Rory,
to come outside to help me feed the horses.

Apparently, this is one of the most exciting things that the poos and i do together
and there was much barking and jumping to get out of the door.

Once out the door, Rory and Stella, joined up with Sinjin (the lil husky)
in racing to the fence where the horses are.
There, the three of them barked deliriously at everything and nothing,
then they raced to meet me at the gate to go toward the hay.

This race that the poos do, is always filled with thrills and spills
as the two often get tangled up with each other
and, regrettably, sometimes tangled with me.

As i rounded the corner of the woodshed, i heard Skyler nicker,

reminding me that it had been hours, days, and months since he had been fed.

As i approached the saddle shed, i switched on the light

so that i wouldnt put a pitchfork into one of my helpers instead of the hay.

I glanced over at Skyler and told him that i had not forgotten him.
I looked in Okie's direction and didnt see him and i thought that he was probably on his way
from the other end of the corral, where it was a little dark.

The full moon was starting to come up from the horizon, but it wasnt quite high enough to shed much light.
I filled the wheelbarrow with hay and walked over to Skyler's manger.
I noticed that Okie was still not at his manger.

I filled Skyler's manger and took the wheelbarrow to Okie's and i could tell, quite clearly this time,
that Okie was not in his corral and was not in his shed.
With my heart pounding in my chest,
i took the poos into the house and grabbed a flashlight.

Now, usually, i would take a bucket of grain and a halter to catch a loose horse,
but i was concerned about the amount of traffic that we get, at this time of evening,
on the highway beside our house.
In the dark, it would be difficult for a driver going 50- 60 miles an hour to see a horse in the road.
I figured that Okie had leaned on a fence or gate and when it fell over,
he would go into the vineyard.
Our vineyard separates the highway from a 30 ft deep canal,
that had just been emptied of water.

So i grabbed a short "catch" rope from the fence and went across the corral
and found the gate that Okie knocked over.
It is here that i would like to point out that most horses would be raising a ruckus
if a neighboring horse had gotten out.

Not Skyler.
He was oblivious to the fact that Okie had disappeared
and now that he had his hay, he was oblivious to me as well.

I stepped through the fallen gate and started down the tractor path between the canal and the grapes.
It is uneven ground, not easy to traverse on foot, in the dark.
I used the flashlight to check for signs of hoof prints and/or damaged vegetation
that would tell me he was on the canal bank.
It was my prayer that the remaining green grass of the season had attracted him and that he was nearby.

I called his name, hoping that he would hear my voice and nicker, but there was no sound.
I kept calling his name so that i would not startle him in the dark.
As i rounded the bend, the flashlight (not the brightest of flashlights, by the way),
shone on something large and dark.

I prayed that it was Okie, because, if it was not, i was in serious doo-doo.
As i approached, i could see that it was a horse with his head very, very high.
I still could not tell that it was Okie, but, considering the circumstances,
i assumed that this was, indeed, my Okie.

I stopped and tried to avoid scaring him with the flashlight.
I said his name and he started to walk toward me.
He was tense, but, i guess when he realized that it was me,
he relaxed enough to grab a couple more bites of grass.
I showed him the rope and brushed his neck with my hand.

He stood there while i fashioned a semblance of a halter from my short rope.
(Thank goodness i spent all of those hours in my youth,
fashioning halters of string for my Breyer horses.)
Okie was eager to start back to the house
and i had to remind him that he had to walk slowly with me.

As we walked back up the hill, i chastised Okie for scaring me
and admonished him not to go play in the dark any more.

When we got to the fallen gate, we paused and i told him,
"You got out this way; you go back in this way."
I let go of the rope and gave him the cue to pass by me, which he did.
He went directly to his hay manger, as i started to pull the gate back up to see
if i could lock it into some sort of stable position.

The moon was brightly shining as my husband and i fixed the gate so it wouldnt be so easily pushed over,
and then he and i walked hand-in-hand over

to listen to Skyler and Okie crunching contentedly on their supplement and cookies.
Everybody was okay, now that i got my heart started again,
and it was a perfect moment for a hug and a kiss in the moonlight.


But Okie and Skyler didnt even notice.