The Wild Weasel Hunt

The Wild Weasel Hunt
© Ken Harris 2008


We rode in the Rio Hondo a lot back in the late 1950s, before the river became a huge, concrete drainage ditch. Then the riverbed had nice, deep sand. If either Sheba or Legend had eaten too many oats for breakfast and yearned to be wild and free, a brisk, hundred-yard canter through deep sand would adjust his or her attitude. Too many oats have much the same effect on horses that too much single malt has on humans.

On this particular morning I was riding Sheba and Joanne was riding Legend. As we drowsily plodded through the river sand in the morning sun, a weasel suddenly ran in front of us, gasped, and frantically darted about looking for a hole. We had accidentally gotten too close to him. I don’t know whether it was the human smell, the horse smell, or an unpleasant combination of both, but he wanted to put as much distance as he could between us and him -- if he could only remember where his hole was. As he ran, Sheba caught sight of him and took off in hot pursuit. Something to stomp, oh joy, oh bliss. I literally went along for the ride. With a hip hooray and a what the hey, I went wild weasel hunting with Sheba.

Joanne and Legend joined the chase. That poor weasel ran from bush to bush for five minutes, looking for his personal bush with his personal bolt hole while we chased furiously. When I say “we” I mean Joanne and Sheba. Legend was typically clueless, had no idea what we were chasing. She never saw the weasel. All she knew was Joanne was for some reason asking her to go very fast and move in several different directions at once. I had no control over Sheba, so I went where she did feeling lucky not to continue heading west while she suddenly wheeled to the south. Sheba was agile. Really, really agile. I stayed on her back only because I maintained a death grip around her middle. I may have even had my feet crossed underneath her belly.

The hunt came out in the very best way possible. Nothing happened. The weasel survived to tell his grandchildren about his memorable day in the Rio Hondo river bed. Neither horse nor rider broke a leg, so we didn’t have to shoot anybody. It was a fine hunt.