How did the horse save the turtle?

Photo by Sarah Olive on Unsplash

My horse was prancing around the paddock, head aloft, nostrils flared, tail lifted in a perfect arch. It was the classic look of an Arabian show pony – but he’s a different breed altogether. He usually ambles between grazing spots at a pace more suited to a funeral procession. His distress regarding whatever he’d discerned in his environment had transformed his usual demeanour.

I walked to the paddock to see what the commotion was about, looked earnestly in the direction his eyes indicated.

‘There’s nothing there Finnegan’ I proclaimed from the limited perspective of my own eyes. He stopped and stared at the monster or the ghost and emptied his capacious lungs with the sound of a forceful gale – the penultimate warning sign given by a horse.

I kept walking towards my neighbour’s fence to placate him (Look, there’s nothing to worry about.) He kept his distance while he continued to stare and snort.

Again, I took my coordinates from his eye direction. Was he bewildered by the netting over their passionfruit vine, just the other side of our fence?

Another check of the coordinates and I leaned over the fence to look beyond the netting. Then I did spot something very odd-looking. I couldn’t believe what my eyes were telling me. I yelled out to my husband to come and give a second opinion. ‘Is that a turtle with its neck stuck in the dog fence?’

Indeed it was. The turtle was only fifteen metres or so from the dam, and the poor animal could not get its neck out from the metal jaws of the fence. On closer inspection, we discovered the suffering creature was still alive. My husband released its neck and returned the turtle to the dam. All was well; it disappeared into familiar water rapidly. We’ve no idea how long it had been stuck, or how much longer it would have survived.

I turned to look at my horse who had been watching proceedings from a distance. ‘You were right, you saved his life.’

He gave me a disdainful look accompanied by a sigh that said I told you so as he turned to amble away, his usual pace reinstated.

How did the horse know the turtle needed help? What form of communication passed between these vastly different life forms? Beyond sight, sound, touch and taste, there’s another way to be aware. There’s a type of consciousness, a way of knowing beyond words, which was a blessing for the turtle on that day: animal wisdom.

Postscript

My horse had been at least 60 metres from the turtle when he started expressing his concern. He may have seen it, but horses’ vision is cued for movement, and this turtle wasn’t moving. He may have heard it, but I couldn’t hear anything even when I got close and horses’ hearing doesn’t pick up frequencies much lower than that of humans. Even if he had seen or heard the turtle, how did the horse know it needed help? Inter-species intuition, the finer vibrations of knowingess, common to us all and accessible to us all, when we allow the other noise to slip away.