Chapter 1: Rex
Artman
Diaries Chapter 1: Rex
It was a putrid color.
A mixture of swamp green and yellow puss oozing from his eye. I had seen this color before in horror movies
like The Exorcist, The Swamp Thing or The Walking Dead but I just didn’t expect
to see it this morning up close and personal.
I couldn’t see his eyeball but the substance that came from the corner
of his eye was definitely visible.
Our love affair started just a mere year prior before when I
got a call from a friend of mine that owned a local horse rescue farm. “Hey, do you want to buy a horse that is
going to the kill pen? The guy that’s
driving him said he would release him for only $800 which is the cost they
would give him at the slaughterhouse.”
How did everyone know I have a deep moral obligation to save as many
horses from the kill pen as possible.
Who saw when I was passing lonely, thin, neglected horses that I
murmured “Its okay” to them as a tear fell down my cheek. “Don’t you have any room at your place?” I
replied to her. She came back with a
sorrowful “no” and I immediately replied, “Let me talk to Ray and I will get
back with you.”
I hung up the phone and knew that I could persuade him to
give him the right opportunity to present itself. Ray was in the bathroom as he is six to eight
times a day. He has suffered from IBS,
irritable bowl syndrome, for the last 20 years but has never done anything to
fix it. I came in casually and held my
breath. I don’t usually visit him in the
bathroom as the air is as polluted as a New York subway, but I felt like I had
a captured audience, so I took my chance.
“Hi honey, how are you?” and before he could answer I pounced like a
puma in the desert landscape. “Shelley
just called and told me about another rescue she may get today.” He turned to
look up at me but only with his eyes.
His head remained forward as if still looking at the phone. “You have got to be kidding me. You’re thinking about another rescue? Don’t we have enough to do with the other 3
rescues out there? Not to mention the
cost! What did you tell her?” I whipped
out my phone and showed him a picture of the old horse galloping in a pen. He had a saddle on so we couldn’t see the
extent of his neglect. I could see it in
Rays eyes and his demeanor as he was coming up with more reasons why another
1200lb pet would be a bad idea. I
interrupted his chain of thought and said “We can ride together! This is our chance to have 2 horses and
gallop away in the sunset like the old Western movies!” [he watched western movies and television
shows on a regular basis] and with that he replied “Let me get done with the
paperwork and you get the horse trailer ready.
Why do I let you talk me into these things?” In which my response was “I love you so much
honey!” and I ran toward the door grabbing the keys to the old Ford my dad
passed down to me along with the farmland where the horses were to stay.
We arrived within 30 minutes, and I was searching for the old
guy. She had said he was malnourished
but not to the point of being a skeleton.
My husband and I both gasped “wow” at the same time. Here was this very tall horse with skin
covering his bones. If you would look at
him from the back end, he looked like one of those Holstein cows. I never knew a horse could be so thin. His head hung low, and his eyes were
big. It was like he knew he had just
made it free but had no energy left to fight with. I went up to him and looked at him squarely
in his big, brown eyes and said “It’s okay buddy. We are going to take you home”. And that is
just what we did.
He didn’t say much on his arrival to anything as the new
scenery astounded him tremendously. We
had large trees in the yard that hung over the grass. He was taking it all in when all of a sudden
he heard “auuukkkkk” followed by several other squawks of help from the back
yard, to on the hay shed, to in the back of the truck. It sounded much like an air raid, and he had
no idea what was making such a ruckus and startled quite a bit upon exiting the
trailer. “What is wrong with him?” Ray
asked with a louder tone than usual. “It’s
just the peacocks, I don’t ever think he has seen one before.”
I assured the old guy that the peacocks were more scared of
him than he is of them. He didn’t
believe me and kept cocking his head up high.
I led him through the gate to where Reba and Mack were. Reba is our miniature and she is a mare. She is the boss and even our young 2-year-old
gelding knows this. The old guy comes in
and smells her and her ears, the whole 2 inches of them, become flattened on
her head. He knew the pecking order
instantly and bolted away.
“What should we call him?” I asked Ray quizzically. “Well, we named Mack after Reba for
MacIntire. How about we see what her husband or boyfriends name is?” and I
whipped out my phone to type the country singers name in the search
engine. “It says here her boyfriends
name is Rex. That sounds good to me.” And
so, from then on he was called Rex.
