The Horse

“A horse.” It fell out of my mouth without my even thinking about it.

That’s what I vocalized to my computer screen when I read the first prompt for Mama Kat’s writer’s workshop this week. The prompt is “who was at your front door?”

I was at work, and my coworkers heard me. Both turned around to look at me curiously, and I responded, “Oh, just talking to my email again.” This has happened more than once at work. While they usually take this response as an appropriate answer, I had to elaborate with the story this time.

As a child growing up in a rural area in the Midwest, one becomes familiar with the local flora and fauna; perhaps more so than one’s raised-in-town peers. I know how to identify poison ivy and poison oak, and I’m proud to say that I’ve never had either. I’ve also picked blackberries off the side of a chip and seal road, and feel that I might be able to feed my kids off the land in the event that we must become hermits due to alien invasion or zombie apocalypse.

Blackberries are always in season, right?

The fauna side of the equation was a bit more difficult to navigate. As a child in the country I had to deal with lots of animals I’d have preferred not to come in contact with. Groundhogs and possums are some of those things. Did you know that Missouri has scorpions? I do. I’ve also seen a tarantula in the wild (if you consider my mom’s car tire well the wild) and learned firsthand how to remove birds and hummingbirds from one’s house (and lizards and mice). It involves a magazine and a plastic cup. The Nana is an absolute pro. She’s also an absolute pro at scaring possums out of one’s garage and drop kicking vermin across a country yard while dressed in work boots and a ratty blue bathrobe.

I’ve dealt with my fair share of snakes and box turtles, and even watched the Nana be attacked by a rogue goat once. The best one, of all the menagerie stories there are to tell, is the one when our neighbor’s horse came a-calling.

It was late in the evening, and I think I must have been around Anthony’s age. I distinctly remember that I was sitting at the dinner table (near the front door), although I cannot remember why, exactly. My mom was likely in the blue robe mentioned above. And if you live in an area rural enough to warrant a dirt road and a party line (if you don’t know what a party line is, you need to seriously look that shit up—it was not conducive to my teen years) you don’t have unannounced guests—especially in the evening hours.

I looked towards my mom, wondering what would happen, and she looked back at me as she approached the door. She slowly opened it, and in the evening’s twilight we were greeted by a very tall being with a very large, elongated head. After staring at this, in an attempt to process what we were seeing, for about 1.2 seconds, the being whickered. And both of us let out a high-pitched, blood-curdling scream.

The Mr. Ed wannabe (as the Nana called him from here on out) was a horse that belonged to our neighbors across the street. He was a well behaved horse, with one exception. When he was bored, he’d get out of his pasture and go for a little stroll. For whatever reason, he’d decided that the best way to end an evening out would be to pop in on his neighbors. 

Over the coming years he’d do this again, and our response would be much calmer than it was the first time it happened. That being said—and despite living in towns and cities my entire adult life—whenever there’s been an unexpected knock on the door in the evening it’s always made me prepare myself mentally for seeing the horsey face and eyes of a 17 hand neighbor when I pull that door open.