Stories from the Amazon - Runaway Horse

I was the typical horse crazy teenage girl, madly in love with everything horsey. After the passing of my first horse and spending a year on furlough in the USA, we were back in Brazil and I had money saved up again to buy another horse, my second horse. There was a place in town that was similar to what a fairgrounds would be here but they also boarded horses there and had a bar where all the local rich land and cattle owners would congregate. I enjoyed going there to walk through the barns and dream of having another horse. In that time I met a guy who spoke English and he was quite excited to be able to practice his English on me and he also had some horses and did some horse trading. He found out I was wanting to get another horse and he just so happened to have a feisty chestnut mare that might fit me perfectly. We drove over to his land and I tried the horse out, Her name was Foxy. I was in love at first ride and ended up buying her on the spot After the typical back and forth horse trading banter we agreed on a price and I took her home.

My first horse, Nathaniel, was an easy going, gentle, very calm horse and I kept him tethered to a rope and every day I would move him to a fresh grazing area. He never minded if the rope got wrapped around his leg and he would just wait patiently until he was rescued. Foxy on the other hand, from the moment I got her home, I knew there would be no way to tether her like that. She was a red headed hot head.
My brother had a duck pen that he had recently built for his duck raising project. It had a low fence that if you tiptoed and jumped a little you could get over it without using the gate. We decided that it would probably hold my new horse. Sometime during the night it rained, which wasn't at all unusual since half the year in the Amazon it rains. The next morning I woke very early with the excitement of a new horse. In my pj's I went out to see her and make sure she was okay. To my horror, there was no horse in the pen! I looked all over on the fenceline and found a spot where it looked like she had just jumped out. I ran back in and woke my dad to come help me find her. We looked everywhere. No Foxy in the yard, not in the neighbor's yard, not on the gravel road. But then we found her hoofprints and they led out of the gate of the whole mission complex. Someone must have left the gate open during the night or early morning and she found her way out.
My dad got on his little motorcycle and started following tracks. I was in short boots with no socks, and I'm pretty sure I just threw some clothes over my pj's and followed the tracks by foot. By the time huge blisters started forming and I almost couldn't run any more I heard the motorcycle coming back. "She went across the airstrip", he said!
Now you must understand, our mission base was located on the back side of the airstrip and there pretty much was no fence on that side. at that time ( now there is) There was a road to get into town that went right past the back side of the airstrip. Not many people knew about the road except for those who lived back there like us. And the crazy thing is that Foxy's previous owner used to work at the airport and he would occasionally ride her to work. Somehow she remembered that and figured out where it was and crossed the airstrip and was peacefully grazing grass by the airport. We rode the motorcycle back and were trying to decide how safe or dangerous it would be to drive across and get her when all of a sudden the airport police came across with their sirens going. They started yelling at us that we couldn't be there so close to the airstrip. We told them about the horse and they yelled even more, saying they would have shot her if an airplane had been landing. Thankfully, no airplanes and I was able to catch her and walk her all the 8 kilometers home in the mud, with no breakfast and blisters on my heels.
That was the very first of all our crazy adventures. She was quite a mare! And yes, I did find her a safer place to live besides the duck pen!