My fences are tall and well built and have 9,000 volts of electricity running through them. In spite of these features, my horses still manage to escape fairly regularly.
Matilda is the usual culprit. We've nicknamed her "the fence tester", because she somehow seems to know every time the electricity to the fence goes down and she's small enough to squeeze through the fence when it's not hot. Whenever we find Matilda in the lawn, we know there's a problem with the fence.
But in the last two weeks we've had two jail breaks involving all three horses and no problems with the fence. Last night was the latest. Of course, it was freezing cold, very windy and snowing. Because why would my horses do something that wasn't terribly inconvenient for me? So, last night at 10 pm I was trudging around in the snow, capturing wayward beasts and inspecting the fence. The fence was fine, the gates were all closed, so how did they get out? I have no clue. Sometimes the gate latch sticks when it's cold, but I'm pretty neurotic about checking it. An even more disturbing possibility is that one of the horses may have figured out how to work the gate latch. I don't even want to contemplate that! From now on, I'm chaining the gate shut. That should solve the problem, whether it's a sticky latch or curious equines.
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| Try opening that without opposable thumbs, you wicked beasts! Actually, no.... Please don't try. I'm afraid you might succeed. |
A curious thing happened while I was walking the fence line for the final time before I went to bed last night. I wanted to make darn sure that there was no way the miserable cretins could escape again, since I was not interested in going back out in the snow to capture them, so I was trudging along with the voltmeter testing various parts of the fence. As I walked along, the horses started following me. When I stopped, they stopped, when I started walking again they fell in right behind me in a row. Weird, especially considering that not even a half hour before they had been running around my back yard like hooligans and refusing to come anywhere near me. I decided to play a trick on them.
I stopped and turned to face them. Once they stopped, I turned and sprinted through the pasture as fast as I could go. I figured they would be totally confused by my shenanigans and give up on their creepy stalking. Just as I was about to start giggling at my "trick", I heard hoof beats behind me. They were still following me. It was at this point that I realized this wasn't one of my better ideas. I am not a good runner and I was now being chased through dark, icy pastures by 2500 lbs worth of hoofed animals that may or may not be able to stop as quick as I could. I glanced behind me to gauge how close I was to being run over by the stampede. Then I realized how incredibly slow my inefficient bipedal running is. My "sprint" was more of an ambling jog for them, and I was really never in any danger of being run over. I stopped, they stopped, and the "trick" was on me!
