Wildlife / by Kevin Huang

| Wildlife |

#Talesfromtheotherside

“Are they wild?” I asked.

 

“Well, they belong to a guy actually.  Have you ever seen that guy who rides around town on a horse?”

 

“Yeah, the guy who is always drunk all the time?”

 

“Yeah that guy.  Those are his horses.”

 

My mind drifted back to a few nights prior as I was laying on my couch in my open-air living room when I heard a rustle in the bush.  Expecting an iguana, my eyes widened as I realized that what actually stood 15 feet in front of me was a 1,100 pound horse, taller than me with only some short grass as a barrier between us. 

There were two horses to be precise, peering at me from the edge of darkness where the feeble light of my iphone reached with only jungle abyss behind.  To think, two horses had snuck up to within 20 feet of me and I hadn’t even noticed them.  The chicadas and other insects you hear throughout the night create a relatively large amount of background noise and it’s basically pitch black outside.  As usual, the two machetes I owned were 100 feet away from me in the cabin (with the horse between us no less) so I simply just grabbed my broom as a weapon.  My solid, 70 pound hunting dog continued to enjoy his after dinner nap.  

Eventually I shooed them off into the darkness.  Weeks later I wondered to myself if I should have offered them an apple.  

Eventually my mind made the connection.  Those horses must have been his.   

“So he just lets them loose?  They just wander around free?”  

“Yep.  Whenever he needs them- like when he gives gringos riding lessons- he just goes and fetches them.”

“Huh.”  I pondered incredulously.

“Yeah, it’s pretty crazy, this local gringa vet girl was complaining the other day that nobody is taking care of them and some of them are sick.  One of them died the other day. It was kind of a problem because there was just this rotting horse carcass on the side of the road.  Eventually the town had to hire someone to go pick it up.”

“Why doesn’t the guy pay for it?

“He has no money.”

“Ah right, the drinking problem.  Makes sense I guess.”  

We sat in silence for a while, meditating on reality.  After a time, I tenuously broke the silence:

“So… they’re basically wild then.”

 

“Yeah I guess so.”

 

Later that week the two horses visited my house again.  A baby fowl was with them.