Flickr photo by seabird1.

The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of insruction. -- William Blake

The intrepid heeler sisters are howling to beat the band, the kind of canine alert you can't ignore, and you and your husband rush to the living room window to catch a flash of sleek, jet haunches and burly tail amidst the brand new fruit trees that could be more accurately described as hopeful looking sticks straining up out of the parched New Mexico earth. Especially in the wake of the recent hailstorm.

"Toby's loose," Dennis yells the obvious as the draft horse disappears like a shadow beyond the window's edge, and you both rush outside to catch the big bull before he plows the yet-to-be realized apples and apricots and peaches into the ground beneath his pie-plate-sized hooves. Or decides to eat one for a snack. Dennis has spent over a year digging holes and preparing the ground for those two-dozen fruit trees.

They're important.

Toby and you almost collide as you come around the corner with a bucket of grain. Food--It's the foolproof plan. Always. The five year old gelding rolls his eyes and sucks in his whiskery bottom lip like he does when he's trying to tell you he's still just a little baby and not all that responsible for his actions. Even when he's obviously killed that back stretch of fence he's been working on for some time--the one separating him from all those delectable green weeds--for good.

A midnight-black percheron is not the only shadow lurking around lately. Something just as large and slightly more wiley has been prowling among the tender shoots you've planted and nurtured within your own interior landscape. A place you're slightly bemused to discover apparently comes with fruit trees too.

He's a little upset at having found himself loose, so he's been casting an eye around in your direction. And when you collide up against something that big, it nearly knocks you to the ground or makes you turn tail and run for safety. The spectre might even try to trick you into thinking that somehow he's simply not responsible. And actually, he's got it right this time around. When you find yourself staring at the ungainly, dancing shadow--he's got his bottom lip tucked in, and his eyes are rolling--all of a sudden you are laughing and laughing, and now you are nearly having to hold your sides, because you both know you are. And have been all along.

Then you give your shadow a kiss on his whiskery, velvet muzzle and start watering those apple trees.