William
02-04-2005, 03:54 PM
I'm driving down I-95 South yesterday from my studio on my way home. As I'm approaching the raised stretch that passes the tall parking structure for the Providence Place mall, traffic starts bogging down. A little unusual for that time of day but it happens. As I'm getting closer to the mall I see flashing lights in the high speed lane of north bound side. I'm figuring that people heading south are rubber necking and slowing things to a crawl. I see a couple of cars turned around and smacked up, fire engine and a couple of state police cruisers. As I get up the the accident, all of a sudden one of the troopers steps out in front of me and stops all the traffic. I'm in front of the line and as the cars ahead pull away, I notice an SUV with a horse trailer a few car lengths ahead on my side of the highway, stopped in the slow lane. Now, I don't see a horse in the back so I start looking around hoping I don't see one on the road. Just then another trooper and five firemen jump over the Jersey barrier and walk up to the horse trailer talking amongst themselves looking into the trailer. I then notice a women standing there too, very distraught and crying. Obviously the owner. After a few minutes of conversation, two of the firemen start to unhook the door/ramp, as they lower the door, all of a sudden they are all scrambling away from the trailer. As the ramp hits the ground, I realize there is a Clydesdale horse on it's back in the trailer. How he got turned over I have no clue. The horse was flailing and bucking on its back, firemen scrambling to get clear, one of the troopers is all of a sudden looking like a linebacker hopping up & down waiting for a running back. As the horses flailing and bucking start to slide him out of the trailer, the trooper is still hopping up & down and his right hand drops to his side arm, unclips and starts to pull it out part way. Now, I'm sitting in the front row watching this unfold and I'm thinking, "OMG, I'm about to watch either the horse get shot by the trooper, or he going to go nuts and jump off the side of the highway", which is about 50 - 60 feet up in the air! As the horse slid out of the back of the trailer, he rolled over and got to his feet. Trooper still standing there with his sidearm half-holstered, the owner slid up next to the horse very smoothly, got sort of underneath his head, gently raised and hooked her left arm up and around his nose and applied a little pressure to keep him from moving (THAT IS ONE BIG HORSE!!!). At that point the trooper holstered his sidearm, raised his hand and slowly moved toward the horse in a sort of "nice horsey, good horsey" kind of way. I realize I'm white knuckling the steering wheel watching all this. One of the firemen gets a harness from the trailer and give it to the owner. Then they have her walk her horse about a 150 yards down the highway to the next exit ramp and one of the firemen gets in her vehicle and follows her. Obviously they felt the horse was too spooked to try and put him back in the trailer. After that they let traffic start moving again. I don't know if the horse bucking in the trailer caused a rubbernecking accident on the otherside, or the traffic rubbernecking the otherside and honking freaked out the horse? Either way that's what I call one for the books! I'm glad it turned out ok. The rest of the night, all I can see is the trooper jumping around ready to pull his pistol and the horse on it's back flailing.
William
William