Maryland Rescuers Assemble Fifty-Nine Fence Panels To Outsmart Runaway Mustang

What happened

According to UPI, an untamed mustang that spent more than two months roaming loose through Maryland has finally been captured and transported to an animal rescue facility.

The horse, now called Outlaw, originally escaped from its former owner’s property in late June. Over the ensuing weeks, residents and officials spotted the animal running free on multiple occasions in the vicinity of Liberty Reservoir in Carroll County.

UPI reports that Carroll County Animal Control coordinated a capture operation on Thursday in partnership with Gentle Giants Horse Rescue and professional horse expert JR Raulerson. The recovery team constructed a specialized chute made of fifty-nine individual fence panels, each measuring ten feet by ten feet. The corral was configured so that the animal would willingly walk into the passageway, which guided the mustang directly into a waiting trailer without incident.

Following the successful operation, legal ownership of the horse was officially transferred to the Humane Society of Carroll County. The organization subsequently placed Outlaw into permanent care at Gentle Giants in Mount Airy.

Dale Kowalski weighs in

I spent twenty-two years in local television news, and if there is one thing I learned about county government, it is that nothing gets approved faster than an emergency requisition for livestock fencing. When a mayor wants to pave a road or fix a culvert on Maple Street, there are three public hearings, an environmental impact assessment, a bond referendum, and two solid years of angry letters to the editor. But when an untamed horse is spotted trotting through the brush near the municipal reservoir, all protocol evaporates. Suddenly the county budget opens like a cheap umbrella, and people who normally argue about zoning permits are standing in an empty field arguing about tactical chutes.

The horse in question has been given the name Outlaw. That was probably inevitable. Nobody names an escapee horse something sensible like Gary or Phil. He got out of his owner’s pasture back in late June, which means he enjoyed two full months of summer vacation around Liberty Reservoir in Carroll County, Maryland. Two months is a respectable run for a fugitive. Most escaped farm animals get tired around day four and walk into someone’s carport looking for an apple.

Outlaw did not want an apple. He wanted the open timber. I once covered an emu that broke out of a petting zoo outside Fond du Lac on a humid Thursday in August. The sheriff’s department pursued that bird across three cornfields with a golf cart and a bass net before deciding the emu was simply part of the township now. You cannot rush an animal that has figured out it does not actually have to pay rent.

Carroll County did not use a golf cart. They called in Carroll County Animal Control, Gentle Giants Horse Rescue, and an expert named JR Raulerson. That was smart. I respect the level of professional restraint involved here. When you see a large, frightened mammal wandering through the underbrush, the natural human urge is to send six deputies into the woods with flashlights and walkie-talkies. They did not try to chase the animal with ropes or call in a traffic helicopter, because chasing a mustang on foot through briars is how you end up in the evening broadcast on a stretcher while the evening anchor reads your name over soft piano music.

Instead, they assembled fifty-nine portable fence panels. Each panel was ten feet by ten feet. If you do the arithmetic, that is five hundred and ninety linear feet of steel corral, laid out in the trees like an elaborate cattle maze. It takes a remarkable amount of patience to haul fifty-nine ten-foot steel frames into the woods on a Thursday just to convince one horse that walking into a horse trailer is his own idea.

And it worked. The chute guided him straight into the trailer, ownership was handed over to the local humane society, and Outlaw is now residing at a rescue facility in Mount Airy. He spent the summer running wild along the water, and now he has a private stall, regular oats, and a management team. That is not a capture. That is a successful municipal negotiation.

That’s the news. Somebody had to say it.