08.26.08
Scary horseback and driving encounter
On August 2 we had our most frightening horse experience ever. We’ve been lucky and sort of charmed at times in avoiding serious injuries working with horses, and that luck continues to hold (knock on wood!)– at least we are still in one piece.
We set out from home with Glendale pulling the metal training cart– with Hubby and our young horse-loving friend Bailey– and this day I rode Gilford. I felt I would practice what Emmie had taught me in my recent Mom’s riding lesson “without stirrups to improve my balance.”
Starting out for the woods trail, passing a sheep farm (those are Gilford’s ears inside the green ear net of course… LOL)
Bailey with Dad and Glendale, who wears a fly net over his whole face and ears…
Turning around at one dead end Dad explored.
Heading up a power line cut and into the woods, Glen’s cart in the lead. Trail is a little bumpy, and Gilford doesn’t neck rein so it’s a tad tricky to steer him with one hand.
We knew that deer flies would be pretty bad in the woods this time of the summer, and they were! Our preparations of bug ointment, fly spray and ear nets slowed the deer flies down to a couple dozen per horse when we reached the wooded trail, and poor Glen in the lead was tossing his head a lot. (The lead horse attracts the worst of the bugs, which latch onto their poll at the top of their neck and buzz annoyingly around their ears.)
Entering a thicker part of the woods
The woods trail seemed pretty peaceful at first, except for deer flies…
Things weren’t too bad until we started down a sloping woods trail, when suddenly my mount Gilford, following behind the cart, began to buck and pitch a fit. I glanced back and saw what looked like a large horse fly on his rump, but I didn’t try to shoo it off– I was too busy holding his head up and single-reining him and trying to stay on him! I was also yelling WHOA! WHOA! so Dad’s passenger Bailey bailed out of the cart (she’s a sensible young girl.) Gilford passed his brother, got in front of him, then stopped and tried to scrape the bug off by rubbing himself on Glen. Not too cool, what with the shafts sticking out and Glen being harnessed to the cart.
Hubby was out of the cart too by then, he grabbed hold of Gilford’s bridle to help me, and I dismounted quickly. We both felt that Gil was being a crazy horse because of the deer flies, and we agreed we should turn back and get out of the woods. As we led the horses around to backtrack, Gil started bucking and rearing again and totally freaked out, he pulled the reins out of my hands and took off galloping back up the trail.
At that point my biggest fear was that Glen might break free of us too and take off after his brother. I had visions of him galloping up the trail with the cart flailing around behind him and crashing into a tree or worse. Hubby had Glen’s head by his left rein, so I grabbed his right rein as we both led him back up the trail. Suddenly Dad started yelling and slapping at himself– his head and neck and back! Glen jumped around then too and got very agitated.
It had taken until that moment for us to realize we were all being attacked by bees (well, wasps technically), which turned out to be yellow jackets. We hurried forward as fast as possible without letting Glendale start running. Gilford came back (not willing to go far without his brother) so I grabbed his reins again, and we booked it until we were out of the woods. Poor young Bailey got two stings which brought tears, but she was very brave.
We stopped then and scraped off a few dead wasps, we all remounted, and we headed down the streets for home. It took a while for the boys to calm down, and Gilford was understandably a bit hypersensitive to flies on the trip back. Once safely in the barn, we counted 6-8 sting welts on Gilford, 11 on Glen, and poor Hubby had nearly 2 dozen stings, including near his mouth which caused his lower lip to swell up. He iced it and took some Benadryl and aspirin. The stings had been very painful at first.
After phoning the landowner, we returned to the location later that day, for two reasons. Dad had lost his glasses (most likely while slapping himself in the face during the bee attack), plus the landowner wanted to spot the nest so he could get rid of it. We expected to find an underground nest, though we were incredulous that bees would go to ground so early in the year because that normally happens in the fall.
We found the glasses, remarkably intact, and finally spotted the yellow jacket nest– it was in a hollow stump at least 3 feet away from the edge of the trail! Those jackets had flown out and attacked the horses just for walking by in the middle of the trail!!! When we had turned around to leave, we had passed the nest again and they had converged on poor Dad, the closest to them at that point, then hit Glendale on Dad’s right. Being on Glen’s other side, I was screened by the horse and somehow I never got a sting myself.
Apparently when we first walked past the nest going out, Glen in the lead had attracted their attention but Gilford coming behind got hit by them first. Dad had brushed one off his forehead but didn’t know it was a bee. Turning around and re-passing the nest was the worst thing we could have done (perfect hindsight!) At the time neither of us realized it was bees, it all happened so fast.
In researching afterwards (yellow jackets) I learned that in late summer, because the colonies are at their fullest maxed-out size, yellow jackets CAN become even more aggressive than normal, and they are pretty bold normally. Scary way to find THAT out– but the nest was destroyed by the landowner who returned at dusk to spray it, on a couple of different evenings.
Neither Hubby nor the horses had any allergic reactions to the stings (if that’s possible for horses?) and we were terrifically lucky no one suffered other injury. This episode was much the most horrifying thing we’ve had happen with horses… horse people beware! I knew from a bee encounter on horseback years ago that underground nests can be exposed in the fall by breaking or clearing new woods trails or even traveling on unfrequented trails, but this attack in late summer was completely unexpected, and unprovoked as well in our minds. Not in the wasps’ minds though.
NOTE: If you were expecting pix of the bee attack and afterwards, dream on! You’ll just have to use your imagination! In fact if I had had my camera in hand when Gilford started bucking, there’d probably BE no camera at all anymore!
NOTE #2: Since Gilford didn’t manage to buck me off, could it be that Emmie’s riding lesson did me some good?? I can tell myself that, but I’d rather NOT put it to the test again like that!!
