Every evening when I go out for a stroll, I take an apple and a carrot in the hope of finding a horse to give them to. Mostly there’s only Millie and she’s too far away to hear my whistle, so the goodies get taken home again. But tonight I saw Cliff – stable mate to Millie and Rosie – in the last field at the top of the lane and close enough to have his attention attracted. He came over to me, put his head over the gate and gently nuzzled my forehead while I took the apple out of its bag and fished for the penknife in my pocket. Suddenly he looked up, shied so violently that he almost fell over, and then galloped away across to the far side of the field where he took refuge behind a bank of shrubs.
It was a bit of a shock and I wondered what he could have seen. I looked around and saw nothing, but horses are renowned for sensing threats even before they’re visible, so what was I to make of it? A mystery; that’s what I made of it. And here’s another odd fact:
Where we were standing is a matter of yards from the point at which the lane joins the main road, and at that point the main road narrows and winds around a tight double bend. The man who is married to the owner of the three horses once told me an odd story about that spot. He said he was driving around those bends when something ran across the road in front of him. He said it would be impossible to describe, but it definitely wasn’t human and was nothing like any animal he’d ever seen. And it ran on two legs.
You have to wonder, don’t you?
When I walked back down the lane to come home I made a point of turning round a couple of times to look behind me, but the cows in the fields lower down seemed unconcerned so I chose to follow their example.
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