My family had a horse named Spiral when I was growing up—kind of a weird name, but hey, horses have weird names. One morning we went outside and Spiral wasn’t in his pen, so my mom did what everyone in La Salle did when they had an animal go missing, she called the Esso.
“Has anyone called to report a wandering horse?”
Luckily for us, someone did. A family from the other side of town spotted him and kept him at their place until we went to retrieve him.
Here’s a high-quality photo of Spiral and me (he was just a little guy).
It was a recurring thing for our animals to wander outside the yard. Spiral mastered jumping the fence after his first escape, and we had an entire heard of goats get loose a couple of times. Our dogs also liked to go visiting around town, and our two young cows once swam across the river, which served as the fourth wall to their enclosure. Our animals’ tendency to escape didn’t reflect the way we treated them; they lived like royals. I think the problem was more of a containment issue—we were a little too lax.
The place to go to report a missing animal has now shifted from the local gas station to social media. My friend Paige is from Russell, Manitoba, and she showed me this Facebook post.
Aside: If you’ve never seen an alpaca before, here’s one jumping with joy.
(photo: localharvets.org)
Alpacas don’t just jump though—CLICK HERE to see one surfing.
Here’s another post Paige came across on her Facebook homepage.
Poor little pony.
My aunt wrote this next Facebook post. She came across a pack of travelling pet dogs by her place near Arborg, Manitoba. If you check out the comments, you’ll see this new method of animal lost and found on Facebook is just as effective as calling the Esso.
Good thing the “SNIFF” Gang didn’t get lost and end up in Morweena!
~Janet
small town things 