Two stories caught my eye today. Both were exceptional little gems in their own right, but work even better in tandem. Today's theme: riding while intoxicated.

We've all heard the stories about good ol' plow horses that would stand patiently for hours outside the pub and then take their masters home when they finally came stumbling out after one or ten too many pints of Guinness. Charming, yes?

... But you have to think said good ol' cart horses were also traversing good ol' roads most of the time--not busy highways crowded with motorized vehicles!

Or, in the case of our first tale: a city street in the middle of a whiteout snowstorm in northern Wyoming. In high winds and subzero temperatures. On a white horse.

Yes, in the story brought to us by the Billings Gazette, 28-year-old Benjamin Daniels was detained after police received calls that he was creating a road hazard on his slow-moving white horse.

"Because of the wind, the blowing snow and the color of the horse, we were worried he was a danger to himself and motorists," Assistant Police Chief George Menig told the paper.

The police cited Daniels for public intoxication and took him into custody. A friend (who apparently didn't get the memos about letting friends ride drunk) picked up his horse.

And then, on the same day, we got this one, from the UK:

From the Associated Press, Godfrey Blacklin pleaded guilty to a charge under the 1872 Licensing Act of "being drunk in charge of a carriage horse, cattle or steam engine." (I want to know what they mean by "in charge" of cattle here. Herding, perhaps? ... I do have a wonderful mental image of riding a cow while intoxicated ... perhaps even organizing wee little races? Go, Bossy! Mush! )

Blacklin, 31, had been stopped by police while riding bareback in Newcastle (ironically, itself an excellent brown ale) in October. Officers found him to be wobbly and slurring his words. His total fine was about $265.

I would like propose a simple solution to this rash of intoxicated riding: opinionated horses. Seriously. You have to think the mounts involved in these stories were hip to the fact that their pilots weren't operating at 100% capacity. It's only through their kind nature that these fellows were upright and still mounted. Let's find them something rascally to ride and see how far they get next time--sort of a naughty pony as electronic tether. It could work.

Finally, the office of TheHorse.com is an interesting place. On any given day you might hear us pleading on the phone for photos of artificial equine vaginas or finding really great public health videos on rabid bats. ("Don't. Take your eyes. Off the bat!")

Today's random office topic: bushkazi. It's a mounted game. It's sort of like ...  umm, polo, I guess. But instead of a ball, you have a headless goat or calf carcass.

Anyway, it was brought up at a presentation last night. I remember my weird delight in first discovering this, and so thought it would make good blog fodder.

More info from a family that visited Afghanistan in 1977 and saw a bushkazi game. While the article claims it's only played in Afghanistan, the presenters last night were recounting participating in a pick-up game while travelling in China.

We hear stories pretty frequently about horses running loose in places they shouldn't be, but a story reported in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel adds a new twist.

Milwaukee police corralled a horse running loose on and near the Marquette University campus earlier this week. But here's the thing--the horse had been in a trailer hauled by a man who dropped his girlfriend off at Marquette. At some point on or near campus, the horse exited the trailer. But the driver didn't notice that the horse was missing until he got to Beloit almost two hours later.

Now, how does this happen?

But then, the article does not give the horse's name--I wonder if he's called Houdini?

Also this week, police in Poland pulled over a driver who had stuffed a pony foal into the back of his Fiat Uno, according to an article from the Austrian Times. The driver had purchased the foal and was transporting it to his farm, about 150 miles away.

According to the report, he tried to outrun the cops, but between the backseat strapped to the roof of the car, the three men wedged onto the front seat, and the 260-lb pony in the back, the poor Fiat just couldn't take it and the engine conked out.

Police fined the driver and confiscated the pony until proper transport could be arranged.

See a photo.

Any other odd transport stories out there? Comment below!

Another one from the files of "Gee-I-wish-I-had-a-weird-news-blog." Last March, I stumbled on a blog post from Wired entitled "Science Creates Creepy Headless Donkey Machine." How can you not click on a headline like that?

Gist being, the folks at Boston Dynamics created a big robotic pack animal--a robot critter that can climb hills, navigate icy surfaces, jump, and run (and passage!), all while carrying stuff. But unlike a (real) mule or donkey, it doesn't need to be fed and doesn't get tired. Cool, right?

Only problem is, this thing is terrifying. As the Wired blogger correctly pointed out, it's headless. It also drones like an angry horsefly. And, to rank it even higher on the creepy scale, it reacts to its surroundings, giving it an appearance of eerie intelligence (see :35 in the video). As it was being developed for the Department of Defense, maybe that's the goal.

Seriously, click the link. Watch the video. Be prepared for nightmares.

It's not a horse. Or a donkey, pony, mule, or Zebra. But it is a large herbivore and it is weird.

A cyclist in Colorado very politely stopped to allow a cow to cross to the road on Monday. But the cow apparently had other ideas: it knocked her off her bike and stepped on her!

Could this be a case of retaliatory bike tipping? Read the story.

As the article notes, "Boulder Mountain Bike Alliance vice president Jason Vogel called the incident 'odd, rare and random.' "

Odd, rare, and random. That's what we're going for!

Okay, okay. I'll talk about the mare in West Virginia who somehow wedged her head into a tree trunk.

This happened back in October 2008. For some reason, the UK's Telegraph picked it up, and this story went absolutely viral. It was EVERYWHERE. Including my inbox. Ad nauseum.

I didn't feel right picking it up for primetime play on TheHorse.com as I couldn't get a good handle on who really shot the pics to get legal permission to reprint (article says it's the neighbor who cut her free, while credit under the image goes to someone else--and there were some other inconsistencies on the other sites on which the images were posted).

So here it is. A link to poor Gracie who got her head stuck in a tree. Also, please note the Telegraph's excellent concluding line: "It remains unclear why Gracie put her head into the gap."

Now, please stop e-mailing me about it. Don't get me wrong--I love news leads from readers. Just not this one. Ever again.

A driver in a Dakar motorcycle race had to take evasive action to avoid a stray donkey that wandered into his path. While it sounds like the motorcyclist's quick maneuvering saved the donkey (and himself) from injury, this made me think of another race collision narrowly averted--somewhere in the depths of the Web there is a video of a horserace in which a fox runs out onto the track, very narrowly avoids being stepped on, and runs off again.

Now, I know I've seen this video. So we went to some trouble today to find it. However, any searches involving "Fox" and "Racing" invariably brought up yet more motorcycles.

However, some more creative searches did bring these gems:

-and-

Porcupine racetrack (go to 2:00 for the porcupine's lament). This is apparently a sketch from a mid-90s television show called 'The State'--while it seems to be work-safe (just bizarre), I make no guarantees about the related videos. Watch at own risk.

All in the name of legitimate news searching. If anybody knows where to find the fox video, comment below or e-mail me.

And thanks for the shout-out, Orlando Sentinel. Holla back!

What's weird about that?

Well, the Zebras came to officials' attention after one, named Barcode (love it), was found wandering the halls of a campus building at Emory University as part of a year-end prank. The subsequent investigation revealed that the owners had let their permit for Barcode lapse and never applied for a permit for his striped pal, Jazz.

The take-home message here?

1- If you're going to have a Zebra, get a permit and keep it current.

2- If you lend your Zebra to someone, make sure you know what they're planning to do with it.

A donkey owner in North Hampton, N.H., became concerned earlier this month when he noticed his donkey was gaining weight. Suspecting a nighttime intruder was overfeeding the portly beast, he did the logical thing: he called the cops.

According to the story on seacostonline.com, the donkey owner inquired about posting 'no trespassing' signs and potentially prosecuting the intruder. He also floated the ideas of installing a security camera, and possibly spending the night in the barn to catch the intruder in the act (how fat IS this donkey?).

According to the report, the officer said he "could not tell him what to do, but getting himself involved was not the best option."

However, violence was avoided: the caller instead sprinkled flour and cayenne pepper near the grain barrel in hopes of finding some tracks. He succeeded. As noted in the police report: "It was determined from the tracks, that the offender is a large raccoon."

We've all done it: on the way home from the barn or a show, we pop into the grocery or a gas station.

But a London-area equestrian was recently asked to leave a grocery because, as the security guard put it, she was, "smelling too much."

According to the report on dailymail.co.uk, rider Krys Gunton stopped at the shop, still in jodphurs and boots, after finishing a ride on her boarded horse. She says she had a bit of dried mud on her boots, but no "muck" (love the Brits)--just "eau de horse."

I was thinking about this story last night as I went on my own post-barn errand, in my case, to rent a movie. Sitting in the parking lot, I decided to untuck my jeans from my mid-calf barn boots to camouflage them a bit. I also opted--despite the cold--to leave my beloved barn coat in the truck. You see, this coat is not a "light duty" barn coat. It's a relic of my college equestrian team days and has years of riding, stall cleaning, wheelbarrow dumping, and hay tossing, as well as layers of horse slobber and dog hair ... anyway, you get the picture. While I do wash it annually (a must before it's stored in a shared closet!), it absolutely seeps the dreaded "eau de horse" from every stitch. Simply put, it's not fit for polite company.

So I shivered my way into the movie store, made my selection quickly before my boots had a chance to get up to room temperature, and headed for the door. At the checkout, the clerk made a remark about the weather, which I replied to with an offhand remark about being glad to be done with barn chores. He froze (as I think "oh no! I'm smelling too much!"), looked up, and started telling me about he and his wife's horses, asked where I board, remarked on the price of hay, and generally seemed thrilled to have a little horsey moment in the middle of his shift.

Guess I could have worn the coat!

Any similar stories out there? How horse-friendly is your area?

Finally, am I the only one to misread this headline?

If your reaction was "poor pony!" then no, I'm not.

For the record, Mount Pony is a theatre.