Horses Have a Sense of Humor
a Horse with a Sense of Humor
In every herd, there seems to be one horse with more personality than its herd-mates – a horse that seems to stand above the rest in terms of intelligence and sense of humor.
The best example of a horse with a sense of humor was Thunder, AKA Houdini. Thunder was a horse from my childhood, who was a trickster and an escape artist. He holds the record for the best practical joke played by a horse, but he has a contender vying for that honor.
We now have a horse on the farm named Georgie (pictured). He’s a handsome Tennessee Walker, and like Thunder, he seems to have the uncanny ability to let himself out of his stall, the barn, and even the pasture. He also fancies himself a bit of a jokester.
We feed our horses big, round bales of hay in the winter. We generally remove most of the loose twine, but invariably some of it is left with the bale in the pasture. This excess twine tends to ball up in tangles after the horses have eaten the hay, so somebody has to pick it up every so often. Usually, “somebody” means my wife or I, but occasionally we send one of the kids out to do it.
One day in early spring when the snow had melted and uncovered several such balls of twine scattered around the pasture, Kathy sent my son Sta’su out to pick it up. He was about 9 years old, and dutifully he gathered up all the little bundles of twine. In the process, some of it got wrapped around him, and about 15 feet of it was trailing behind him as he made his way toward the gate. Georgie, curious as to what was going on, trotted over and spent a few moments watching the string following along behind Sta’su. Once he figured out what was going on, he decided to have a little fun. He stepped on the twine, putting an abrupt halt to Sta’su’s forward movement. Sta’s yelled at him, but Georgie just stood there.
“Mo-om!” Sta’s hollered.
Kathy, seeing what Georgie was doing, yelled “Georgie! Get off that string!”
Georgie moved off the string, but Sta’su had only gone a few yards when Georgie caught up to him, and again, stepped on the twine.
“Mo-om!!” Sta’s hollered again.
“Georgie! Get off that string!” she yelled again. This time she threw a small stone at him, just to accentuate her message. Georgie moved off a few yards, and once again, Sta’s headed for the gate. Georgie let him get about halfway there before stepping on the twine a third time.
Kathy was watching, and (laughing, of course) went out to give Sta’s a hand. She had to get ahold of Georgie’s halter and hang on to him until Sta’s got out of the pasture. As soon as he did, Kathy let Georgie go, and with the object of his humor no longer available, he immediately lost interest and went back to grazing.
Georgie hasn’t played any more practical jokes on our kids, but he does still manage to pull his escape acts from time to time. Someday I’d like to figure out how he does it.
