For at least two
decades, Edith Ann belonged to everyone, and to no one. Nobody
could agree how old she was, just that the little bay quarter horse
had lived at California’s Golden Gate National Recreation
Area for as long as anyone could remember.
Three
generations of park visitors knew Edith Ann, and many made a point
of coming by the corral to see her. The horse would stand patiently
as parents lifted their toddlers to touch her velvet nose. Even the
tough kids who arrived in yellow school buses beamed when she
accepted their warily outstretched carrots.
Those of us
on the volunteer horse patrol figured Edith Ann to be somewhere
around 25 — about 75 in human years. Like the spunky little girl
in the giant rocking chair played by Lily Tomlin on Saturday Night
Live, our Edith Ann had attitude.
As part of my duties, I
mucked stalls, fed and watered and rode for the federal government.
On my assigned days at the barn, I brought Edith Ann her favorite
snack of raisins, brushed her until she gleamed, picked the gunk
out of her hooves and climbed on her back to head for the steep
trails. Our job was to intercept speeding mountain bikers, dog
walkers, wildflower rustlers and litterbugs. On one of those hills
last year, Edith suddenly stopped, as if to say, “I don’t think I
can do this anymore.” She limped back to the barn.
We
iced and rested Edith’s sore leg for much of the summer, but her
limp worsened. By fall, we’d stopped riding her all together
and talked of putting her out to pasture. But where? The park had
no place to send its retired horses and no budget to feed one that
couldn’t earn her keep. The ranger in charge said he would “keep us
advised.” All the volunteers could do, it seemed, was worry. The
e-mail arrived a few weeks into the New Year. “The recommendation
is euthanasia.”
But to my eyes, the mare, though clearly
footsore, was as spunky as ever, eating heartily and bossing the
geldings around the corral. In private hands, horses with
Edith’s Ann’s ailment, ringbone — a kind of
osteoarthritis in the lower leg — are commonly treated. The
problem was that Edith wasn’t a pet. She was federal property. And
her career was over.
Hundreds of horses and mules work
for the National Park Service, mostly in the West. They carry tools
and supplies to backcountry work crews, pull cannons for battle
re-enactments, and break up unruly demonstrators. No one knows what
happens to most of the Park Service’s elderly equines, or
keeps track of how many are sold, slaughtered, or euthanized
because the agency has no further use for them.
A chosen
few, like Francis the mule, who for more than 20 years dragged
tourist barges up the capital’s C&O Canal, are retired
ceremoniously. Hundreds of people attended Francis’ sendoff
to Jimmy Carter’s boyhood home in Plains, Ga. It even aired on CNN.
But without a national policy or a place set aside for
them, what happens to the government’s elderly equines is for
each park to decide. Some rangers try to find adoptive homes for
their aging mounts and “trail buddies.” But there is no requirement
that they do so. Of the more than 13 million acres of public land
in the national park system, not one is dedicated to retiring its
horses.
Animal lovers are a constant source of
consternation to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
Surrounded by more than 7 million residents of the Bay Area, no
other national park is as much a part of the daily lives of so
many. Public hearings are well attended and frequently dominated by
those who argue their right to unleash their dogs or feed feral
cats. The night before Edith Ann’s scheduled euthanasia, park
superintendent Brian O’Neill received dozens of e-mails pleading
for Edith’s life; he decided to commute her death sentence.
It took a few hundred dollars and a few months to get
Edith back on all fours, but this horse’s luck held: Upon
hearing of her plight, a horse sanctuary in Davis, Calif., offered
to take her in. When I visited Edith Ann last week, she jogged
across her corral, put her velvet nose in my hand and demanded
raisins.
Somewhere between 500 and 600 horses are owned
by the National Park Service — working as long as they are able.
Like Edith Ann, they belong to everyone, and to no one.
Susan Ives is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a
service of High Country News (hcn.org). She writes in Mill Valley,
California, but no longer works with Park Service horses. “It
is humbling,” she notes, “to be fired from a volunteer
job that requires so much
shoveling.”
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