Margarine

I was rid­ing Marge on the old Ahman­son Ranch on a cloudy morn­ing in May when a swarm of bees attacked us. A few bees buzzed around me, but most of them went after Marge, swirling around her head, dive-bomb­ing her face and neck. Shak­ing her head so vio­lent­ly it became a red blur, she backed up with short stomp­ing steps and hopped side­ways off the trail into tall grass.

The prospect of being thrown from a horse con­cen­trates the mind, espe­cial­ly if you’re 77 with dou­ble knee replace­ments. Janet, my rid­ing train­er, had schooled me well. I tight­ened my legs around Marge’s bar­rel, pressed my boots down firm­ly so I wouldn’t lose my stir­rups, gave Marge more reins to shake off the bees, and focused on stay­ing cen­tered and balanced.

Des­per­ate­ly try­ing to free her­self from the bees, Marge spun in a cir­cle, stopped, jumped for­ward, backed up again, shook her head, and danced around fran­ti­cal­ly, but the bees stayed with her. Scared and stung, Marge began to buck, not big bucks, but a series of short lit­tle hip-hops.

I’d held my seat up to that point, but I expect­ed her lit­tle bucks to esca­late at any moment. I’d seen Marge buck­ing just for fun in her cor­ral, kick­ing her back hooves in the air high­er than her head, twist­ing to one side and then the oth­er. No way I could stay on her back through those rodeo-bron­co bucks. I braced for a bone-break­ing fall.

But the big kicks nev­er came. Instead, Marge lunged for­ward and broke into a full-on gal­lop across an open field.

Marge is an Amer­i­can Quar­ter Horse, a breed known for quar­ter-mile bursts of speed up to 45 mph. She can fly, and we did. I didn’t even try to rein her in. She was in run­away mode, and there was noth­ing I could have done to slow her down. I just held on as best I could.

About fifty yards into it, the wind from Marge’s bul­let-speed peeled the bees away. They streamed by our sides like twin dark cir­rus clouds. She ran until the bees were far behind us, then slowed down, and pulled up in a clear­ing near the ranch’s gate into Hid­den Hills.

Janet was rid­ing Jack­son about twen­ty yards ahead of Marge and me when the bees attacked. The trail dipped into a lit­tle swale lined with Cal­i­for­nia live oaks. There must have been a bee­hive in those trees that Janet and Jack­son stirred up when they went through. Com­ing along right after them, Marge and I bore the brunt of the attack.

After Marge out­ran the bees, Janet and Jack­son came up behind us at the gate. “Good rid­ing,” Janet said.

“Thanks. You get stung?”

“No,” she said as she dis­mount­ed. “The bees went after you and Marge. Jack­son and I got off easy.”

Marge was still great­ly dis­tressed, shak­ing her head and pranc­ing ner­vous­ly. I jumped off and held her head while Janet pulled two stingers from her neck. There had to be more, but we couldn’t find them.

Marge was too upset for me to ride her, so we led the hors­es down Long Val­ley Road to the barn. The whole way, Marge leaned against me, rub­bing her face and neck against my shoul­der. She was try­ing to ease the pain of the stings, but it also felt like she want­ed my reas­sur­ance that we were safe. “Easy, girl,” I said again and again. “We’re okay now.”

I stayed with Marge at the barn longer than usu­al that day, pet­ting her, hug­ging her, and giv­ing her cook­ies and car­rots. I didn’t leave until I was sure she’d calmed down.

That night as I lay in bed, I thought about the bee attack. Hors­es are prey ani­mals. Their instinc­tive reac­tion to dan­ger is to run. The flight reac­tion is imprint­ed in their genes, passed down over mil­len­nia through thou­sands of gen­er­a­tions of wild hors­es. When the bees attacked, Marge car­ried 165 pounds of dead weight on her back. Scared and in pain, she should have thrown me so she could run away faster. It should have been an instinc­tive compulsion.

But she didn’t throw me. I thought about Marge for a long time that night.

I took up horse­back rid­ing at the age of 70. (See For The Love of Hors­es.) Sev­en years ago, four months after my sec­ond knee replace­ment, I climbed on a horse while Janet held her in place. That horse was Marge, a sor­rel (red­dish brown) mare, small, 14 ½ hands (4 feet 2 inch­es tall at her with­ers), strong, with a wide chest and round­ed, well-mus­cled hindquarters.

Janet pur­chased her from a barn in Stock­ton. She had a horse named But­ter back then, so she named her new horse Margarine.

I learned the basics of horse­back rid­ing on Marge’s back. After that first ride, I rode Marge and no oth­er horse almost every day for three months. I bought her from Janet that spring.

I have five hors­es now. I don’t play favorites, but if forced to choose one, I’d lean toward Marge. She’s mis­chie­vous, play­ful, and perky. She loves kids and dotes on my grand­chil­dren, espe­cial­ly the lit­tle ones. And she loves Car­rot Man.

She won’t allow me to be in her pres­ence with­out giv­ing her my full atten­tion, for­ev­er nudg­ing and bump­ing my back and shoul­der and rip­pling her lips over my arm. Some­times, she even tries to groom my hair.

She’s jeal­ous when I pet anoth­er horse, kick­ing her stall door and paw­ing the ground until I give up and come back to her.

I ride five or six days a week. Of all my hors­es, I’ve clocked the most time on Marge, 700 rides over the last sev­en years being a con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mate. You devel­op a part­ner­ship with a horse over so many rides. Marge and I know each oth­er well. I can tell what she’s think­ing, and I feel like she knows what’s going on in my head. I talk to her some­times, espe­cial­ly when I’m trou­bled. And for some mag­i­cal rea­son, stress melts away when I’m with her.

Don’t tell any­one this because it’s kind of embar­rass­ing, but some­times on solo rides I sing to her. “Margie, Margie, pump­kin pie/Kiss the boys and make em cry.” I think she likes it. I mean she pricks up her ears and all. That’s a sign she likes it, right?

Twice I thought I might lose Marge. The first time was a few months after I bought her from Janet. A horse has lit­er­al­ly 100 feet of intestines. A lot can go wrong inside her bel­ly. Kinks, block­ages, and obstruc­tions can cause col­ic, a painful and some­times fatal con­di­tion. Marge got it bad. She laid down in her cor­ral and wouldn’t get up.

The vet was tend­ing to anoth­er emer­gency and couldn’t come till lat­er in the day, so Janet took charge, keep­ing in touch with the vet by phone. We made Marge get up, walked her around, gave her a water-hose ene­ma (believe me, you don’t want to know the details), and fed her soupy bran. By the end of the day, the log­jam broke, and Marge recov­ered ful­ly. We caught it ear­ly and she was prob­a­bly nev­er in seri­ous jeop­ardy, but I was an equine neo­phyte at the time, and I was afraid she wouldn’t make it. Even that ear­ly in our rela­tion­ship, she had a firm grip on my heart.

A more seri­ous health threat occurred one morn­ing three years ago. When I arrived at the barn and opened the stall door, Marge lift­ed her right front hoof and extend­ed it toward me. There was a deep slic­ing gash across her fet­lock (sim­i­lar to the human ankle). In the crevice of the cut, I could see bone. Blood had drained down over her hoof, and she couldn’t bear her full weight on that leg.

I knew more about hors­es by then. I knew that leg injuries are often fatal and that she prob­a­bly wouldn’t sur­vive a sev­ered ten­don or dis­abled fet­lock joint.

With my heart in my throat, I texted a pho­to of the wound to the vet. He dropped every­thing and raced to my barn. Look­ing grim, he exam­ined the wound and test­ed the fet­lock. It only took a few min­utes, but it seemed like hours to me.

“We can treat this,” he said, let­ting out a long breath. “She’ll be all right.”

I turned away from him and wiped my eyes.

As I lay in bed the night after the bee attack, I could still see the look in Marge’s eyes three years ago when she lift­ed her hoof to show me the wound to her leg. I saw pain and fear in her eyes, but there was some­thing more, too. There was trust. She knew she was in trou­ble, and she was count­ing on me.

The day after the bee attack, I met Janet at the barn. “I’ve been think­ing about yes­ter­day,” Janet said. “Marge could have thrown you if she’d want­ed to, you know. She let you stay on her back to pro­tect you.”

“I think you’re right,” I said. “It seemed like she did the best she could not to hurt me.”

“I know I’m right. Any oth­er horse would have thrown you off.”

My bond with Marge did not come cheap. Tons of car­rots and cook­ies, tens of thou­sands of pets and hugs, putting up with count­less demand­ing bumps with her muz­zle and buck­ets of horse spit on my shirt and in my hair, inces­sant­ly wor­ry­ing about every hic­cup that might sig­nal anoth­er bout with col­ic, and open­ing her stall door every morn­ing scared to death of what she might have done to her­self this time. And there’s the singing. Don’t for­get the singing.

It paid off, though. In pain and fac­ing a threat she didn’t under­stand, Marge fought off the over­whelm­ing equine instinct for self-preser­va­tion and sac­ri­ficed flight speed to car­ry me away from the danger.

“That horse loves you, Ken,” Janet said.

This is true; it’s a great gift; and it goes both ways.

Post Script: Rid­ing pal, Annabel, solved the mys­tery of Marge’s leg wound. She found dried blood on the wall below a piece of tin under a barn win­dow in Marge’s stall. In an inex­plic­a­ble acro­bat­ic maneu­ver, Marge must have reared up against the win­dow and slashed her leg on the tin’s sharp edge. It was a fluke acci­dent, but I ripped out every piece of met­al in my stalls.

Adren­a­line and fear for your life are effec­tive anti­dotes to bee ven­om, I guess. Although I felt no pain dur­ing the attack, I found sting-welts on my arms, neck, and back after I left Marge at the barn.