The White Unicorn

In the wee hours of the morning on the coldest day of the year I heard our motion detector go off in our driveway. I got up to see what had set it off. I couldn't imagine who or what would be out on such a cold night. I opened the bathroom window rather than the front door and I heard very heavy footsteps crunching on the frozen ground. Then I saw a pure white horse walking in our front yard. I shook my head thinking I must be seeing things. Then I saw a brown horse following, and then a black one. In my half awake state all I could think of was the horses were going to eat my landscaping and I yelled,"Yaw, yaw", loudly and the horses trotted off around the corner.




Then I thought better of what I had done thinking the horses must have gotten loose from a barn or pasture. So I ran to wake Gary up to help me round up the horses. Gary and I got our clothes on and went outside. We looked all around but the horses had disappeared. We looked for hoof prints, but the ground was so frozen we couldn't see any. Gary turned to me and said, "Are you sure you saw a white horse?". I said yes, I saw a white horse and two others too. We called the local sheriff in case someone was missing their horses. We lived on a main road and didn't want anyone to hit the horses if they drove by. Later Gary said, "You must have seen a white unicorn!" He started kidding me about seeing a unicorn. Later I told the story to some folks and word spread quickly about the story of the white unicorn.




A week later everyone in town was asking me about seeing a white unicorn. Months went by and everyone in town still asked me about seeing a white unicorn. I kept insisting I had seen a white horse, not a unicorn. Then during the summer I learned a neighbor was boarding three horses nearby. I drove over to see the horses. One horse was black, one was brown and one was white. I asked if the horses had ever gotten loose and they confirmed the horses had gotten loose on the coldest day of the winter. I was finally able to prove I had seen a white horse.


This morning we drove through Ocala, Florida and saw some colorful horses in the town square. The public art is called Horse Fever and the sculptures reminded me of my unicorn story. So I decided to make a tile of a unicorn this afternoon. I am almost out of white slip, so this is an emerald unicorn. I'd like to make a few more unicorns, especially a white one, as a reminder of how much fun everyone in town had kidding me about the unicorn I saw. Comments and suggestions are welcome.