Escape Artist! (The Backlog!)

"MIKE!" Carrie yelled.

I flew out of the bedroom. "What?"

"Maddie's in the boy's lot!"

Hooves beat a tempo through the walls to accentuate her point. The boys were on the chase.

I had my boots on and was out the door first. I dove through the lines and started to separate the boys from Maddie. Carrie came running out a moment later.

Horses are big. Thankfully, I'd classify the boys as being frisky and energetic over homicidal. Maddie is injury prone and didn't like the attention. Eddie loves the ladies, but both hey and Ernie are old! We needed to separate the herds and calm things down before someone got hurt!

Drawn to the excitement, Shane came out on Carrie's heels. I'd gotten a hold of Maddie at that point. Carrie started opening up stall doors to corral the boys to escort her off their lot.

Only the boys didn't want to go in. They ran right for us. I had to let Maddie go and ward them off.

The good news was Maddie ran out to field. I raised the electric lines behind her and locked the boys in the dry lot. From there, we were able to stall the two geldings and retrieve Maddie after (who was munching happily on grass when I found her).

Carrie checked the security system later to try and discern what happened.

Here, Maddie was in her lot.

Here, we discovered how terrible the placement of our Starlink satellite is for watching Maddie's lot.

Here, we discovered the camera system stops recording when it can't see motion (like if a pony hides behind a satellite long enough).

And here, Maddie is magically not in her lot. The system managed to avoid recording what we were most interested in!

With the help of forensic techniques and process learned from reading and watching too much TV, we worked our way through what footage we did have to make a timeline. 

The cat was but a bump on the road to victory.

Maddie grazed happily for a while before the boys saw her and charged over. We were outside within 2 or 3 minutes of the hubbub's start.

The next morning we spotted Maddie hanging out with the girls.

There was no inter-horse drama, but Maddie needs to be muzzled when on grass so we had to go out and collect her sooner rather than later.

Then it was time to play detective again. The tension was low between the bottom and middle polywire lines. My hypothesis was that Maddie ducked under and stepped through.

Which should have been highly unpleasant, but the fence was turned off. Someone had turned it off for maintenance or something and had forgotten to turn it back on.

If Maddie was jumping over, she could have repeated her trick regardless of the fence's status. We haven't had a repeat, so I think it's safe to conclude Maddie was enjoying a short-lived exploit!

Animals! They keep you busy!