The Houdini Monster

Well that last post about the Monster and fences has raised some questions in the comments. I decided to answer in another post because the answers to those questions are probably long enough to create a whole new Monster Chronicles post.

From Laughing Orca Ranch:

 Where is she trying to go when she escape...or is she just bored?

And Fern Valley asked
Does she go anywhere when she gets out or just get out to prove a point?

That is a really difficult question to answer because she doesn't always escape. Sometimes it not about the "escape" at all,  she even breaks INTO pens.

I was holding off on telling this story until I got the video evidence, but since the question came up here goes.  One day I rescued a small black colt. He was about a year old, wild as a march hare and still a stallion.  I had him penned up with the corral panels to keep him away from my girls until we could get him halter broke and handeling well enough to haul him to a vet to be castrated. So here he is isolated in his pen but he had contact with the girls and everyone else just across the fence. 

Anyway I guess Shy Monster did not agree with my opinion that he needed to be kept separate.  I came home from work one evening to find him running around the pasture with the whole crew!!! Yep the monster had broken him out of his pen so he could go running with the girls.

In the photo above you see the gate only has one drop pin to it. That gate leads directly into my back yard. When the Monster in the pasture where this gate is at, we have to keep a chain on the gate at all times to keep her from opening it and getting into the back yard.  My yard also has two gates that have the horseshoe shaped gate latches that look like this:

Well one day I was outside working in the yard. Shy Monster and her pasture companions came up to get a drink at the water troughs beside the green corral panel gate. She continually "tests" the gate to see If I forget to chain it. This time I had and she lifted up that drop pin and hauled her little rump into the back yard with her "entourage" closely following. The horses stopped at the first bit of fresh, green grass they came to, but the Monster went immediately to the first flip up gate and opened it leaving the back yard back into the other pasture where additional  horses were kept. Then she trots on around to the front gate of the yard, flips it up, leads the rest of the horses into the yard and proceeds to hang out with ALL of her buddies eating grass in the back yard.

Basically in the matter of a minute or two, she broke out of the pasture into the yard, then broke out of the yard back into the pasture and then broke back into the yard.  I was right there in the yard watching the entire thing and you just know she was sassing me the entire time. It was like a kid saying "Nanny-nanny boo boo you can't catch me"

Now if you notice that drop gate latch has a hole on the bottom where you can lock the gate latch down so that it cannot be flipped up. The Monster found another work around for that minor problem also. She just leans on the gate pressing on it until it spreads the latch enough to pop it loose from the post. So at the moment the Monster is banned from the pasture that those two gates lead to or else we have to tie the gates shut all the time.

 Again from Laughing Orca Ranch:
Does she like to play with toys? Sounds like she needs to find something more constructive to to do than fixate on escape.

Toys?  yea she has toys, they include the jolly stall ball that has been sitting in the same exact spot for the last 6-8 months probably now frozen to the ground that every single critter in the pasture totally ignores.

 

She has milk jug stall toys hung from more than a dozen trees in the pasture. She's not a stalled critter, she has a 4 and a half acre pasture to roam 24-7 with at least one other companion and usually at least 3 or four companions. She has food available almost all the time. She has toys that she ignores and she has an attitude that makes her a one of a kind critter. 


So If you ever want to test how really critter proof your fences are, I'd be glad to loan the Monster Houdini to anyone who asks. LOL