Horses in Love, a chapter
from Killer Buyer
The soaring price of horse
meat and a deepening drought was dooming thousands of Spanish
mustangs to the slaughterhouses of Ft. Worth.
Tomorrow and Zebra Girl nuzzled each other
across the pipe fence of the round pen that separated them. They
nickered deep in their throats, the love song of horses.
They had first met just moments before. Tomorrow
was nineteen months of age, a virgin stallion. Zebra was five
years old, a decidedly experienced mare.
Zebra Girl, on the right. She's bugging
a gelding (a male horse that has been fixed, on the left) and
a colt less than a year old about, ahem, her feminine needs.
Photo courtesy Carolyn Bertin.
Overhead magpies, black and white, trailing
long tails, flashed through cottonwoods where buds swelled. It
was March 5, 1996, and these horses were in Chimayo, New Mexico.
Each spring, as Easter draws near, this
town welcomes pilgrims who have walked dozens or even hundreds
of miles to its ancient Santuario de Chimayo. They come to fulfill
a vow or show their devotion to the Lord.
I brought Zebra Girl there hoping Tomorrow
could get her in foal.
Tomorrow arched his neck, tossed his grey
mane, and pranced before the mare on legs tiger-striped gray.
His appaloosa-spotted buttocks flexed. Those striped legs meant
he was a "zebra dun." Spanish mustangs are often striped
and spotted.
The mare, also a zebra dun, turned her
gold buttocks to him. A black stripe reached from her mane to
an ebony tail which swept the ground. She lifted her tail and
swung it to the left, revealing a glistening purple vulva. Zebra
made embarrassing motions with her vulva, and shoved her rear
end against the pipe fence.
Tomorrow's eyes widened. He pressed his
muzzle against her vulva. It was his turn to do something embarrassing
with his anatomy.
Karin Begg turned to me and laughed. "I
think we don't need to give them any more time to get to know
each other."
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