A Wood Rat may have saved my horse's life one time. He was 3 yrs. old,
green broke, not steering too well, and in a canyon behind my house he fell
off a narrow trail when he was arguing with me over something. He rolled over
the top of me, clipped me in the head with his hoof (that was the day I went
out and bought my first helmet) and tumbled head over heels down the steep
ravine and was stopped by a huge wood rat's nest. He landed upright straddling
the big woody nest. Luckily, I had a lunge line tied behind the saddle and so
I slid down the side of the hill, attached the lunge line to the vosal he was
wearing, and managed to crawl back up to the trail. With some coaxing I was
able to get him free of the wood rat's nest and he got safely back up onto the
trail. I guess he thought I did all this on purpose because he was an angel
after that. But thank you to the wood rat who stopped his roll down the
hill.