Mares Eat Oats, And Does Eat Oats, And Little Lambs Eat...Oh, Crap!

It's been an exciting weekend around here, sports fans. Let's see; first I went camping for the weekend, not too far away, just over to Nunn's Park in Provo Canyon.

Ro stopped by, with her son, to see Bridal Veil Falls because she's never been there, although she was born and raised in Utah.



(Insert eyeroll here.)

Then on Sunday morning I checked my mail on my phone and I got an email from a person I know in NYC who is in the carriage industry asking if everything out here was alright. She knew about the runway.

"Runway?" I say to myself. "What about the runway? Out by the airport? I don't live by SLI; the carriage barn isn't by the airport…WTF is going on at the …" I read the message again and it says "Runaway". Okay; in my defense I didn't have my reading glasses on and I neglected to hold my phone at arms legnth. So, now I start to tweak. My friend ~A~ was working last night. My other friends were working last night. What the heck… so I call Ro.

Ro has no idea what I am talking about. She tells me to call Kar. But first I call ~A~, but she doesn't answer. Then I call Kar. As it ends up she did not work last night due to an unrelated injury. Finally it's Marky-Mark who I call, last because I figured he was in church, but he gave me the skinny and you can have it too, right here

And here:

Aaaannddd here and here and, well, you get the picture.

A horse has an episode, does a small amount of damage to a parked car, freaks some people out, runs over a cop's bicycle (which he kind of ditched under the carriage when he came to the aid of the driver) and it MAKES THE NATIONAL NEWS.

Hey, guess what? Last week the guy who lives at the end of my block ran a red light and got T-boned by a semi. He was killed instantly. Also last week a guy ran over his kid and it died. Ted Kennedy succumbed to brain cancer. Will you be seeing stories about brain cancer, distracted driving and Spot the Tot? No. Why? Because, PETA wants you to believe that animals are more important than people, that's why. And because there is no organization full of zealots called PETP.

Bad things happen around the world every single day, and much of it will never hit the national wire services. A lot of it won't even make your local news. Why? Because stories about things that we have been desensitized to are just not "news". 120 years ago a "story" about a horse that runs off was not news. Today it's a sensation. A call to arms.

Which makes me ask, where were the boo-hooers and the hand wringers when a guy pulled his horse out of a trailer out in Utah county, shot it, and left it to rot in a ditch? Where were the online news story commenter's when they found five dead horses out in the Grantsville/Tooele area?

And where are the ALF folks when the person in charge of the Norfolk, VA humane society left her dog in her car for four hours on a hot day, and then it succumbed later that night because of the heat?

Oh, yeah, they're going to be sitting in their air conditioned offices raging because Jim decided to spook. That's where.

Silly me.

So, here we were at lunch today, discussing the incident. Property damage. Minor (very minor) injuries to the driver, Jim the horse walks away unscathed. We discussed how it hit the AP wires, and what the other possible fallout could be, besides the owners being responsible for the damage to the car and the bike. We go our separate ways.

Later Ro calls and tells me: Hey, I got a call from a lady this afternoon. She saw the report on the news this morning, and she says, "My daughter is getting married and I thought what a nice way to have them leave the reception. So I copied the phone number down from the video and called to book a carriage."

(Insert Ro and I, ROTFLOAO)

I guess there is no such thing as bad publicity.