You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Horses Confiscated.
How in the hell can you own 56 horses and not feed them.
How in God’s good name do you own majestic creatures and allow them to stand in their own fecal matter in their own food in mud 2 feet thick?
Some humans are cruel. Some humans are stupid. Some humans are both.
This afternoon I went to a stock yard and gazed upon dozens of rescued horses. The animals were walking zombies with four legs.
They were in shock, recently rescued from a Tennessee farm that investigators describe as deplorable.
The dictionary describes DEPLORABLE as deserving strong condemnation.
I don’t think deplorable is strong enough for what I just saw.
Abhorrent comes to mind. Infinitesimally heinous works. Ballistically bad also suffices.
The sheriff of this county is a good old country boy. He has cattle and horses of his own. He is not shaken easily. He stands in the vomit of humanity. He investigates homicides and child rapes.
He is typically unflappable.
But on this day, he is upset.
“The mud was so thick..”
He pauses. Eloquence is not his forte.
“The feces. The smell. It was terrible.”
His words are simple, yet poignant, especially with the terrible visual before me.
He shows me a picture of Tennessee Walking Horses standing in mud so deep it looks like chocolate pudding.
The dark gruel is suffocating the animals legs, like a mysterious bog of death.
“It was quick sand like,” the sheriff says. “It was so deep in places, it went over my boots.”
The sheriff is a big man. He has tall boots.
I imagine mud so deep it is 3 feet deep.
What’s it like to walk in quick sand. How hard is it to move, to stand?
Do you feel like you are suffocating?
Should every moment of life feel like you are suffocating? that you cannot move?
The sheriff shows me 2 little ponies. They are agitated, confused as they stumble around the pen at the Livestock barn.
They are obviously sick. I think they are also in shock. Perhaps they have forgotten what walking in a world without chocolate pudding is like.
He will show me a picture on his cell phone of the abysmal conditions these two babies were discovered in.
“They were crammed into an 8 foot trailer designed for one horse. They were standing on top of their own feces and disgust.”
I look at the photo. It is horrific. It looks like one of those pictures where kids cram into a phone booth to set a record. Only these are scared animals who have no idea what’s happening. And mixed in with their fecal matter and filth is their food. All in one disgusting slop hole.
The 1st thing I notice walking into the Stock Yard is a little pony. It is laying down.
“Too weak to stand,” the sheriff says.
“The sad little animal is shaking involuntarily and eating a pile of hay by its hooves.”
I look at the older horses. Some are in ok condition. Others are so fragile, they look like they are going to collapse under their own weight.
Some of the horses are so emaciated, I can see their skeletal system under what hide they have left.
They look like brittle glass in a China shop that will break if the wind blows too hard.
You don’t have to be a vet to know these animals are in bad shape. The hair on these animals is sparse. Many horses have big clumps of hair missing, exposing bare skin. The animals look like they have undergone equine chemo therapy.
“This is so sad,” I say involuntarily .
I ask about the man who kept the animals, a man now arrested charged with 55 counts of felony animal abuse.
The sheriff shakes his head.
“It’s the third time we’ve been out there,” he tells me. “His own father turned him in.”
The sheriff will tell me that the man is a pharmacist in town.
A pharmacist?
I am shocked. The images of the horses starving, standing in their own excrement, coupled with the symbolism of a man educated to heal and reduce pain.
The imagery is a car wreck for me, crashing into a wall at 100 mph.
“Did he show any remorse?” I ask.
The sheriff shakes his head. “I think he has a problem with hoarding.”
I go to the man’s farm, a few miles outside of town.
There’s an old dog barking in the distance. The house is small and quiet. There are large horse pens. They too are empty, quiet. I stare at them imagining 55 horses stacked on each other, standing in a gigantic mud pit of disgust.
There are geese walking across the driveway. There is an eerie calm about the farm.
The rain clouds have cleared and the there is a hint of blue sky.
I imagine 56 horses in the muddy pen, fighting for a bale of hay, trying to yank their hooves out of the suction cup mud.
I bang on the tin door.
It sounds hollow.
Thwap. Thwap. Thwap.
I look at my photographer. It’s obvious nobody is home.
I step off the stoop and watch as two geese saunter into the field. They have no worries. They can flap their wings and leave this hell hole.
The horses are safe now. I’m told that over time they will recover and be adopted.
I stare for a moment at the muddy pasture. There is not a speck of green anywhere .
“What did they eat?” my photographer asks as we pull out of the driveway.
I shake my head.
Some humans are cruel. Some are stupid.
I think maybe this guy was both.
Life’s Crazy™