Wild Arabian Horse

When people think of wild Arabian horses, they invariably conjure up the image of a majestic steed, perhaps just misunderstood, like Black Beauty, who prance about on some desert isle in slow motion, with a perfectly groomed, windblown mane such as one sees in shampoo commercials. 

That was not the case with the one I encountered last night. For one, he was white, emphasis on was. At one time. Now all besmirched with mud and blood, his fur was barely visible, but his muscles and veins stood out under his translucent skin like some anatomy model. You could literally see his blood coursing through his veins. He had a halter on, and a long lead rope was connected to it. 

He had broken free of his captivity, where he'd been tied up with a dog at the other end of the rope. This was bad news for the dog, since the horse took off at a gallop and dragged the white and brown pit bull painfully across the parking lot, bouncing like a rag doll at the end of the rope. The good news was, since he was a pit bull, he emerged undamaged, at least visibly. 

The horse came to a stop by the post office, where presumably he worked as a courier at one time. I know, who hires a wild Arabian horse to deliver the mail, right? 

I thought it was a bad idea, too, and I attempted to tell them that I'd take him somewhere far away where he couldn't drag dogs around or scare postal customers in the parking lot. They just laughed and told me to have at it. I grabbed the halter, and the horse immediately took a nip at me. 

"Hey, watch it," they said, "He bites." 

No shit, I thought, as I held on to the lead rope a little farther away from the snapping teeth. I gave it a sharp tug and yelled at him, as one would with a misbehaving child, with no cursing and a firm controlled tone which told the horse that it wasn't my first babysitting assignment. He stopped trying to bite and began to pull, becoming a 1000 lb kite at the end of a string. 

I didn't want him to repeat the dragging incident with me at the end of the tether instead of the dog, so I reeled in the slack and got him controlled with leverage. It was harder for him to fling his neck about with me grabbing the rope close to his head. It also put me back in closer proximity with his mouth, but we'd already established that there would be "no more of that" with regard to his attempts to bite me. 

That's about where we left it, with me holding on to a wild Arabian horse, as rank as they come, in the post office parking lot.