Pieter Nagel: Swapping Thoughts

It would seem that horses on frozen lakes are not a good idea. (Well,  people on frozen lakes are not a good idea either, but at least rescuers are more likely to be able to drag people out if you should fall through the ice.)

The following video show one such rescue of a horse that fell through a frozen pond. I found it quite nail-biting to watch, so for the sake of my horse-loving readers, I’ll give a spoiler: it all ends well.

Untamed and Uncut - Horse Gets Trapped Under Ice

The poor horse is in visible distress. Every time she does manage to wrestle her forequarters onto solid ice, the ice just cracked right out from underneath her and the she was dunked back into the frozen water. That seemed to make the horse just despair and dismay; at times she seemed ready to give up and die.

I find the technique the firemen used to traverse the ice fascinating: the laid down lots of ladders flat on the ice, then walked on the rungs of the ladders, instead of on the ice. In that way, the ladders become a giant snowshoe spreading their weight. I wonder of this is a common trick for ice rescues?

However, the firemen seemed obviously ill-prepared for the sheer size of the horse, and although they did manage to rescue her in the end, the way the handled her seemed very ill-prepared. It just seems wrong to try and haul a horse’s entire weight by a lasso around her neck.

It seems the firemen needed  some  Technical Large Animal Rescue training:

Trained horse demonstrating how to be rescued

But the following photo just puzzlez me:

This looks like something that would have the SPCA on your case

I can understand that rescuers will often only be able to use a less-ideal technique for harnessing a horse, but is the demonstrated technique really a viable way for dragging a horse by its tail? Or am I missing the purpose?

The whole thing of “horses falling through ice” seems to happen fairly regularly:

Nature

Like many, I read ‘The Kite Runner’ by Khaled Hosseini, and it gripped me.

The childhood descriptions of the “kite duels” in Afghanistan using kites with ropes that were dipped in glue and then in fine glass fragments – the goal being to slice your opponents’ kite-string in-flight and be the last one remaining – were especially evocative.

Survivor of glassed-string kite

Then Andrew Sullivan spoilt it for me with this post.

You mean the kites hurt hundreds of birds a year?

Nature

(Hat tip to GrrlScientist)

The Japanese video below shows some astounding transformations by a Southern White-Faced  Scops Owl as it is threatened by owls of other species:

I don’t like the way these zoo-displays of the animal’s behaviour stress out the animal. And the silly soundtrack the Japanese put over the visuals makes it clear that they are pretty alienated from real wildlife other than Pikachu.

But the owl’s control over its own feathers is amazing. If it can tweak its feathers that much just for defensive displays, just imagine how much aerodynamic control it must have.

Nature