A HORSE IS A HORSE, OF COURSE, OF COURSE!
...even if that horse is a former Kentucky Derby Winner...

Do you know that a horse walks on its middle toe? That made me think...horses can be crafty animals, after all...every time they walk by you in a parade, they are, in effect, flipping you off! Maybe they hate being ridden, no matter well-trained they are. So, this is their way of getting revenge. It could be, that Christopher Reeve's horse acted with premeditation. We'll never know. There's a song by the Talking Heads titled, "Animals"...in which lead singer David Byrne says that all of the animals are laughing at us, and maybe he's onto something.

Maybe the dog sleeping in the yard on a hot summer's day is glad he's not a human being. And maybe us humans unknowingly overload our systems every day. Maybe all man was supposed to do was to walk, run, eat, breathe, and procreate. Maybe all of the other stuff, like cars, computers, telephones, jobs and everything else we endure just put us all under pressures we were never meant to shoulder. Maybe the birds are the only ones who are truly free. They can soar as they air-hop from one place to another.

I look at animals, and I wonder if they think; if they have memories, if they have points of view, or do they just purely run on 'instinct', never holding grudges or having lasting fears of the 'known' or the 'unknown'. Maybe my life would be simpler if I was a bird. On the other hand, I have a fear of heights. I'd have to be "an apteryx, a wingless bird with hairy feathers", like the one in the "B.C." comic strip. But then again, I don't wanna be cold in the winter, and I require shelter from storms. So maybe I should just be content with my human status. So anyway, what's the point in all of this? I'm not sure. I'm hoping a point will present itself...

Take Barbaro, who came up lame in the race after the Kentucky Derby (I'm not a horse-racing fan, I don't know the name of the race). Barbaro's career is over. Most horses who break ankles are sent to that big pasture in the sky, but Barbaro had ankle surgery and he's trying to recover. I wonder if he thinks about his failed career, that is, if horses think such things. Is Barbaro just a dumb animal, standing in his corral, not sure what to make of the pain in his ankle (does he even remember the incident?), or is he trying to make the best of things by trying to find new avenues in his horse-career? Is he just "there" or is he planning and scheming? Can animals actually plan and scheme? Can an instance, such as depicted below, actually occur?



And, another thought...before we are all put out to our respective pastures, hopefully we can win our own versions of the Kentucky Derby along the way.
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The thought comes to mind that if I had a car that exemplified my writing style (especially in this post), I'd be driving a RAMBLER.