Quite the scare!

I was just at the kitchen sink and glanced out the window to see my horse, Shiloh, laid out completely prone in the front field. Now, normally I might just think that he was taking a nap and recharging his solar batteries (judging by how often all animals do this, I'm convinced they have better solar technology than us humans). But we had a snowstorm yesterday, which meant he was lying in about 9 inches of snow, which doesn't seem very comfortable in which to have one's face flat.

So I was concerned, briefly thinking "what if he dropped dead?!". (That's a frequent worry with my elderly animals). I opened the front door and called "Shiloh?". No response. So I quickly put on my clogs and shuffled through the snow towards him. As I got to the fence, I noticed a little bird perched on his neck. That did it - I thought "Oh no, he's dead and frozen solid and the wild critters are already treating him like part of the landscape!". I climbed through the fence and again said, "Shiloh!". This time his head came up quickly (startling the bird off) as he turned to me with his ears perked forward, and he looked for all the world like he was saying "What?". I asked "What are you doing, you silly horse?!"

At that, he put his head back down, scrubbed it vigorously back and forth in the deep snow until it looked like he was a powdered doughnut, then rolled over and wiggled in the snow with his legs in the air, doing a pretty good impression of making a horse snow angel. Then he stood up, shook, and wandered over to his hay trough. I was very relieved to see he was fine, but wished I'd had my camera to take a picture of him laid out with a bird preening itself on his neck. I just shook my head and went back in the house to warm my frozen feet...