Black Horse

Yesterday morning I was about four minutes into my drive to work when I crested a small rise in the two-lane, and standing there, peacefully grazing on the side of the road, was a ginormous black horse. I pulled to a stop next to it, and rolled down the passenger side window to...what? Talk to it? Confirm that it really was a horse? Ask it what the hell it thought it was doing on this side of the fence?

Window open (apparently it was 13 degrees outside, according to the car), engine idling, I looked up at the horse and briefly, it looked down at me. Then it went back to cropping the closely-mowed grass along the shoulder.

I tried to remember what one does in this situation, from previous early morning close encounters. Call animal control? Wait, that means calling the Sheriff's office. Call the owners? Wait, I don't know who they are. Call our friends who I'm pretty sure know who the horse people are? All moot, because of course the phone won't connect where I'm poised...ON A HILLTOP WITH LINES OF SIGHT IN ALL DIRECTIONS.

Now, at this point, the early dawn is breaking and the sun is teasing a glow in the east; the light is barely beginning to illuminate the massive flanks of this towering, beautiful beast. Steam appears to gently rise from it; the breath from its nostrils hangs heavy in the frigid morning air. It was all very "Michael Clayton." (Minus the car blowing up...)

Finally realizing the obvious, I simply drove down the long and hilly gravel drive to the appropriate house, a place I had never seen in a decade of living on the same road, and knocked at the door. I was assured my knocking had registered by the stentorian barking of a very large and very peeved German Shepard which appeared almost immediately at the sidelight. Unfortunately, it seemed no human was there to assist the poor dog.

I was almost back into the car when I heard the door open and a sharp whistle sound. I walked back to the house, introduced myself, and over the vehement protestations of the shepherd, let the bleary-eyed man know his fence had somehow gotten on the wrong side of his horse. I think he thanked me, but with the dog translating it was hard to tell.

And then it took me two @#$% hours and forty @#$% minutes to get to work. @#$%^^&*(!@#!!! If I had realized the best part of my day was over by 7:15 AM, I'd a just gone home.