Brays Of Our Lives

www.realscience.org.uk

I was touched, and a little sorry, when I saw FarmWife approaching me in the dark last Saturday night. It was after midnight, it was beginning to rain, and she was arriving home from work just as a brisk and unpredictable wind whipped up in the pasture. It had been a pleasant day, and she'd done me the courtesy of leaving me unblanketed. I do love a good roll and a bit of fresh air!

I was sorry because you humans can be so awkward after dark. Like little children, groping along on wobbling legs. Feeling before her, stepping in every muddy rut, and taking tiny, hesitant steps, FarmWife waded into the darkness like it was a thick miasma—a physical barrier dividing Here from There. I saw her coming, clear as day. I saw her fumbling, stumbling, creeping, and tottering through the paddock with the appearance of someone who could not five inches in front of her nose. From across the field, I saw her and became convinced that she could not see a thing.

I helped her out, cantering to her with grace and ease. She was thrilled to catch the flash of my eye before her, and to feel my hot breath on her outstretched hand. She blanketed me quickly, and by feel. She talked to me in the dark, perhaps thinking that I needed to hear her in order to know she was there. I didn't—I already knew.

It was nice of FarmWife to wade into the darkness to dress me. What you humans have lost in terms of harmony with nature—its cycles of warm and cold, light and dark—you make up for in terms of harmony with equines. We still love you, blind and fumbling though you may sometimes be.

FB