wild horses - see picture below. they're dark, in good shape, and, living right around the corner from me. seriously - i live right up against a high mountain, owned by the city, with a 9,000 foot baseball field - and behind that mountain, more or less, is the intersection of the road to mescalero and ruidoso. at that intersection, where the slash pit is, i have seen the three wild horses in the picture below. those wild horses just eat grass in that wild area - national forest to one side, highway intersection, slash pit, mountain used by the city.

at first i thought, they were mescalero. when we go up through the reservation, which starts about eight miles from the intersection, there are horses all over the place. these are wild, i'd say, but i always had the sense that the mescalero owned them, and let them roam free on their land, which is fenced in, generally. therefore those horses would not be totally wild, but would be owned by the mescalero and, though free on mescalero land most of the time, aren't truly wild.

ah but what some people say is, they are wild. they may have started out on the mescalero. or maybe they belonged to someone at some point. but now, they're free. they're on national forest land. they are hard to catch, and, if you do, hard to get them to do anything for you. they like being free. they do very well out there.

should i call the mescalero? i asked the guy at the slash pit. i figured they'd probably want to know if three of their horses had gotten loose. but i was surprised at his answer: no. they are probably not theirs, but just wild, feral. and, they probably wouldn't even come and get them. because, what would anyone do with them? they're wild. it's not like you can just grab them and ride them.

they're out there (see picture below) in threes. they hang around that corner. they're healthy - they've survived a long winter. they occasionally get in the road when they shouldn't. they're big, and, when spooked, they can do a lot of harm.

watch out for those wild horses!