Horse Blood, Fertility Drugs, and Me (Part 2)
A First-Hand Account of Violence in Iceland
This true tale is continued from Part 1.
Warning! Some images are graphic (but not gory).
The horses were mostly silent, with just the occasional whinny from a foal who misplaced her mother in the crowd. The quiet was eerie as we waited to find out what came next.
Agatha and two of the WorkAwayers, Leslie* and Jane*, copied numbers from a sheet of paper onto their forearms in permanent ink. Then the three of them climbed in the pen with the horses, making room with only their presence. The horses protested with snorts as they crammed even tighter into the crowded opposite corner.
“Open the gate!” Agatha shouted.
Leslie maneuvered to make this possible, shifting the horses who stood in the way. About a dozen slipped into the smaller pen to avoid the three humans in their path. Why were they so afraid of people?
“Close the gate!” Agatha cried. The three people climbed into the smaller pen as they closed it. They studied the horses around them, glancing down at the ink on their arms. “That one!”
Everyone reacted quickly, moving to isolate the horse in question. Shaun*, another WorkAwayer, removed a slat of wood that blocked the entrance to one of the two chutes. The solo horse spotted the opening and ran to it, slipping into the chute. A foal broke away from the group and hurried to join her mother. Both horses visibly relaxed as Shaun slipped the board behind the foal’s legs, preventing her from retreating into the pen.
“Move her forward,” the farmer spoke to me. I looked at the mare and her foal, unsure how to make them move.
I walked toward them, but was stopped by Agatha screeching from inside the pen, “NO! GET BACK!” I hurried back to the farmer’s side and shrugged for Agatha to see.
Shaun patted the mare on the rump a few times, and she reluctantly inched forward when she saw him standing behind her. The foal was panicking with only the bars separating her from Shaun — she pushed her mother as hard as she could, and the mare reluctantly walked into the enclosure at the end of the chute.
The farmer slipped a hollow metal pole across the opening behind her legs. The mare tried to reverse but backed into the metal. She pushed against the bar with everything, trying to move through it. She desperately did not want to be alone in the enclosure.
The farmer stuck a short needle in her neck for just a second, drew a small vile of blood, and removed it. He then noted the mare’s identification — A7, and flipped the latch to her freedom. She bolted forward, throwing herself into the open field, but panicked when she saw no other horses roaming there. She grew more frantic when she turned back and saw her foal still in the chute.
The foal was pressing against the metal bar at her chest, trying to escape with her mother. The farmer raised a hand to frighten her back until he could remove the barrier. She sprinted to join her mother. They calmly bowed their heads to eat the grass. I didn’t understand how their moods could alter so quickly.
This process repeated over and over again, with mishaps about one-third of the time. One of the horses would step out of the chute before Shaun secured the boards, or a mare who wasn’t on the list would end up in the chute in front of two others who were supposed to be there. A foal would get separated from her mother — whinnying in protest until we could re-unite them, which often took a while because that was low priority compared to extracting the blood. But we slowly emptied the pen and filled the field.
Derek and I found our places in the workflow. He manned the second chute, placing boards behind the legs of those meant to be there. I encouraged the horses to move forward into the enclosure where the vile of blood was drawn. The farmer would smack the horses with a stick if they didn’t hurry, so I did my best to prevent that from happening. I gently patted their rumps and made whatever weird sound would get them to scoot — it was surprisingly effective.
The worst delays were when we didn’t understand what was requested of us. Often, Agatha would shout to get the “brown” horse but wasn’t happy when the brown horse entered the chute. She would huff and loudly call us all her favorite word — idiots. Then she would scare a black horse into the chute. We shared confused glances but kept working.
The horses who were not on the list would be shooed back into the large pen. Nearly half of the horses remained in there when Agatha said we could stop for lunch. We all sat down in the grass to eat cookies and chug water. Most of the horses milled around, unconcerned about our presence. But one pink lady approached, politely begging for a cookie. We obliged, and she was grateful but greedy. She didn’t stop begging until the package was empty.
As we chatted, we realized the cause for the color confusion. The color names used for Icelandic horses are not the same as in most of Europe or the US.
In Iceland, black horses are called brown, brown horses are called red, light brown are called pink, etcetera. We hoped there would be less yelling from Agatha now that she had shared this key bit of knowledge.
“So what happens next?” I asked, a little unsure of what we had actually accomplished thus far.
“The vet comes.” The farmer replied.
“What does he do?”
“He draws the blood.” I was confused…wasn’t that what we’d been doing for hours?
A beat-up, white pickup pulled up to the field and parked. An unsmiling man in a ratty t-shirt dotted with blood galumphed toward us. The farmer unloaded from his car an open-topped metal box with two large plastic jugs inside. A very brief conversation in Icelandic took place, and we were back to work.
The horse in the enclosure was much more nervous than the mares who were there before lunch. She kicked the ground and snorted almost continuously. The vet’s presence was changing the mood. The farmer rigged the enclosure with a series of ropes, which he quickly maneuvered around the horse’s head. He pulled down hard, causing her face to twist and look up, exposing her neck.
The vet had a much bigger needle than the farmer. It was roughly the thickness of a drinking straw and was connected to a tube that fed into the plastic jugs from the metal boxes.
He stuck the mare in the neck and the tube was no longer clear. The farmer held the rope taut so the horse wouldn’t move. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she stood perfectly still as the jug filled with her blood.
“How much blood are you taking?” I asked the farmer.
“Five liters,” he answered without taking his eyes off the horse he was restraining.
“Is she sick?”
“She’s pregnant.”
I looked at the mare and all the others in the pen behind her. Most of them did have extremely massive stomachs, unlike most horses I’d seen before that. One belly was completely lopsided as if the unborn foal was resting perpendicular to his mother — feet kicked out straight in front of him.
The next few hours were spent draining five liters of blood from the remaining pregnant mares. It did not go smoothly. The nearly wild horses were not happy to give up their blood, and several of them fought tooth and hoof to prevent that from happening.
One horse stands out in my mind, she was red with E45 stamped on the ridge of her back. As the pen grew less crowded, she was less afraid of the people who tried to corral her. Or possibly she grew more unstable with her mounting anxiety.
When the time came to get her in the chute, she fearlessly ran at Leslie, challenging her to a game of chicken. Several of us climbed into the pen to guide the horse, but she continued to run at us, pushing through the narrow spaces between our bodies.
Since we didn’t want to be trampled, we let her pass. Agatha stood outside of the pen, one pudgy leg resting on the metal bars as she watched.
“Idiots,” she spoke loud enough for everyone to hear. Then brayed, “you have to get angry with her! Scream at the bitch!” We ignored her. Instead we made a wall by linking arms, and E45 finally went where we wanted her.
“I’m going to eat that bitch. She’s pure evil.” Agatha’s face was twisted in an expression that can only be described as menacing.
“Eat her?” Derek dared ask.
“She’s going to the slaughterhouse, that one. I’ll have her for dinner.” She licked her lips in an exaggerated fashion. The whites of her eyes were clearly visible.
“You actually eat horses here?” I chimed in.
“Of course!” She snarled, “You’ve never eaten horse?”
“No, it’s illegal in the US.” I turned my attention back to E45.
She was standing at the back of the chute, pressing her backside against the two boards Shaun and Derek managed to block her with. The wood was about an inch and a half thick, yet it bent under her efforts. The dirt slid from beneath her hooves, but the underlying concrete gave her firm ground to push against.
“Come on, move forward,” I patted her backside. She ignored me, continuing to fight.
The farmer grabbed his stick and approached. He whacked her on the butt and hollered in her face. She thrashed and sprinted the ten feet into the enclosure. We fumbled to block her in with the metal pole and several slats of wood.
The farmer tried to wrap the rope around her head, so the vet could stick her, but she immediately started banging her head against the poles when he reached in. She slammed her skull around the enclosure like a pinball in an arcade game. Derek grabbed me as we watched in horror.
She was biting the air and stomping her feet. She kicked the door of the enclosure repeatedly. When she paused for a brief moment to see if anyone was trying to restrain her, the vet reached forward and slapped her across the face.
E45 reared back and hooked her front legs on top of the enclosure’s door. She thrashed more, jumping and kicking. She high-centered herself on the door but flailed until her weight shifted forward. Once her feet touched the ground, she twisted violently until she freed her back legs from the enclosure. She ran wildly into the field, whinnying loudly and riling up the horses she passed.
I was shocked she could still run. It looked like she would have broken bones and caused severe head damage the way she slammed herself into the metal bars.
Her particular brand of rebellion inspired three of the remaining horses to escape blood withdrawal in the same violent fashion. Each time was equally as scary, but the WorkAwayers seemed to be the only ones who cared if the escaped horses were okay. The locals cursed at them and noted which ones were going to the slaughterhouse.
“You’re going to slaughter a pregnant mare?” I finally asked, though I didn’t really want to know the answer.
“We can’t use that offspring. It’d be just as crazy.”
The farmer and the vet finished drawing blood while the rest of us caught five horses who wouldn’t be returning to the field with the others. One was the stallion. He was due in another field to impregnate another herd of mares. The other four were the escaped, “crazy” mares. We loaded them into the trailer with the most unfortunate destination for a horse. The man was moving on to another field to sow his oats, while the women who fought back were receiving the death penalty — sexism at its finest and most lethal.
When the last mare had her five liters drawn, the day was finally over. We just needed to herd the horses back to their field, and we could go home. The new blood spattered across the metal bars and the ground was already beginning to oxidize and turn brown.
An estimated (by Agatha) five figures-worth (in USD — it was millions in ISK) of bottled blood was stacked haphazardly, the sunlight glinting off the metal boxes. We simply left it there beside the pen (you know you’re in Iceland when a highly transportable item worth so much money is left in a field without any concern of someone stealing it).
Everyone returned to their starting places to herd the horses back to their home field. Derek and I stood just outside the pen. We would also have to drive to the opposite end of the street to cut off the horses before they arrived.
The farmer opened the gate to release the horses into the street. Agatha scurried in front of them and hopped into her car.
The horses knew where to go. They never even glanced in our direction as they ran by. When the last horse entered the road, we crawled into the car with Agatha.
She turned around to see Derek crammed behind her, “What are you doing?” she roared unnecessarily, considering the tiny car.
“Aren’t we going to block the other side?” He asked.
“GET OUT! You have to follow them!”
“Me too?” I asked.
Unintelligible bellows in response. So, I jumped out with Derek.
She slammed down the accelerator and was gone. The horses were several hundred feet in front of us already. “Couldn’t she have let us out a lot closer, so we would actually be behind them?” Derek laughed at her lack of logic as we started to run after them. Agatha stopped a half mile away to get out of the car. We could still hear her frantic shrieks.
Up ahead we saw two of the neighbor’s stallions waiting by the fence, watching while the mares galloped down the street. As the mares drew closer, the males grew anxious. They both reared up on their hind legs, wildly boxing their hooves at one another as the testosterone coursed through their bodies. The parade of fertile bodies was too much for their hormone-driven minds. They flashed their teeth and the ground shuddered with their hoof beats.
Their battle raged on until the ladies were well past the fence. I couldn’t help but imagine a couple of catcalling construction workers pushing each other as a group of ladies walks by.
Obviously, horses are much faster than humans, so we never caught up to the herd. If the horses had turned around for any reason, we would have been able to turn them back the right way. But our feet ached from jogging in hiking boots, and it was incredibly hot by Icelandic standards. As a result, it was difficult to see the value in us running so far behind the horses that never once looked back.
When we rejoined the group, the horses were tucked away in their home field, seemingly unscathed by what had transpired. Agatha, however, was livid. She was yelling at everyone for being in the wrong place and made sure to share that we were all “idiots.” We were completely unsure how we had done anything wrong, since we did exactly what she asked, and, most importantly, the horses were all where they were meant to be.
On the drive home, the lecture continued. “Next week, I expect you idiots to do this better.”
“Next week?” Derek and I chimed simultaneously.
“Yes,” her voice was thick with condescension. “We do this every Sunday.”
Continued in Part 3.
*Names changed
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