{"id":4117,"date":"2011-03-30T11:33:08","date_gmt":"2011-03-30T18:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=4117"},"modified":"2020-04-28T13:36:21","modified_gmt":"2020-04-28T17:36:21","slug":"maine%e2%80%99s-misfits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/maine%e2%80%99s-misfits\/","title":{"rendered":"Maine\u2019s Misfits"},"content":{"rendered":"

Winterguide 2005 | view story as a pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

By Stacey Chase<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Horsey Set\u201d takes on\u00a0a whole new meaning at\u00a0this farm in Biddeford<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A<\/strong>ll the pretty horses that dot the pastures at Bush Brook Farm in Biddeford do not have pretty pasts. Each of the 30 wild horses\u2013mostly mustangs\u2013has a hard-luck story that has landed him or her in Maine, after being captured on United States government territory out West. Like a flower that blooms out\u00a0of season, an early snowfall\u00a0or unexpected love, these small sturdy horses native to the western plains are equally out of place and particularly beautiful misfits in Maine, though they\u2019ve long been considered outlaws among the horsey set.<\/p>\n

Driving along West Street and seeing them out there in the snow, you can\u2019t help but wonder, \u201cHaven\u2019t we seen this movie before? And didn\u2019t it star Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve fallen in love with these mustangs because their chances of finding homes are slim unless someone helps them,\u201d says horse rescuer Mona Jerome, explaining her keen interest in a breed often considered the equivalent of a mutt. Clark Gable\u2019s cowboy in The Misfits<\/em> disparagingly refers to mustangs as \u201cchicken-feed horses,\u201d good for nothing other than making dog food or cat food. In the movie, old cowboys catch wild mustangs in the desert near Reno, tie old automobile tires around their necks, and moor them out there under the stars until a truck picks them the next day to take them to the slaughterhouse.<\/p>\n

Forty years later, the breed is still battered, insulted, and looking for love.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot everybody needs to have a horse with papers and champion bloodlines,\u201d Jerome sniffs. \u201cYou know, you don\u2019t need that to go on a trail ride. These are wonderful trail horses.\u201d<\/p>\n

B<\/strong>etter still, you can buy a 2005 mustang for a suggested donation of just $600 if you have the love to back up the bucks.<\/p>\n

Jerome, who has been saving mustangs since 1981, is the founder and president of the Ever After Mustang Rescue, Training, and Educational Center at Bush Brook, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rescuing and rehabilitating previously adopted mustangs, finding them new homes, and offering lifetime care to unadoptable horses of all breeds. And even wild horses couldn\u2019t drag this 66-year-old great-grandmother who still mucks out stalls away from her save-a-mustang mission.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 30 [mustangs] I have at my barn are only a small drop in the bucket of the number that have been adopted out to the general public who do not<\/em> keep<\/em> them,\u201d Jerome says. \u201cThey will live out their lives here if I can\u2019t place them, but I\u2019m trying to place them in good homes\u2013and I am very picky about where they go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jerome acquires her mustangs from individuals, agencies, and horse dealers or purchases them outright through the federal Bureau of Land Management\u2019s National Wild Horse and Burro Program.<\/p>\n

Under the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, a federal law passed in 1971, the BLM is charged with protecting, managing, and controlling all the wild horses and burros found in 10 western states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming. Each year, 8,000 to 10,000 of the animals are corralled and sold at auction in an effort to prevent overpopulation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the wild horses and burros were not removed from the rangelands, they\u2019d die of dehydration and starvation,\u201d says program spokeswoman Janet Neal.<\/p>\n

Sadly, not all adoptions are successful. \u201cPeople lose interest because wild horses are skittish,\u201d Jerome says. \u201cSome of them have never had a stable roof over their heads before they get here. But if you don\u2019t work with them, they get worse and worse, and they grow further away from us and it\u2019s harder to make that contact.\u201d<\/p>\n

Consider Charlotte, a bay mare rounded up in Nevada and adopted by a fruit farmer in upstate New York who for years let her run free in his orchards. When the farmer died suddenly, Charlotte\u201315 years old and completely untamed\u2013was moved to Bush Brook, where she\u2019s adjusting to an environment that surely chafes against instinct.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s sweet, sweet natured,\u201d Jerome says of Charlotte, who playfully nudges at the bulging apple in a visitor\u2019s coat pocket until she\u2019s fed. \u201cShe\u2019s ready to have a home, but it needs to be a rider who\u2019ll be patient with her. She\u2019s what we call green broke<\/em>\u2013 under saddle, but she\u2019s had no experiences and doesn\u2019t know a whole lot.\u201c<\/p>\n

Ginger has a dark brown coat with white socks. \u201cThe people who gave her to us let her run free for 13 years of her life. Do you see? She\u2019s still wearing the pink ribbon they put on her tail so she wouldn\u2019t be shot by hunters. She hasn\u2019t been mistreated; her prognosis is excellent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Good as Gold is an 11-year-old cream-colored gelding with a flaxen mane and tail, also captured on the Nevada desert but adopted by someone in Pennsylvania, eventually ending up at an auction in Skowhegan. \u201cThis horse has definitely been a- bused,\u201d Jerome says angrily, mentioning that the palomino receives massage therapy from a practitioner with human clients who donates her services. \u201cHe\u2019s always so tense. He\u2019s always on the defensive, but he\u2019s got an extremely kind eye.\u201d<\/p>\n

His pen mate is Thunder. \u201cThunder arrived on July 4 last summer. He was adopted as a three-year-old by a private party. The same people kept him for five years but they never did anything with him, never socialized him with other horses. Then a carcinoma began to cover his eye and the\u00a0 owners ignored it. So by the time we got him, he\u2019d lost that eye. He\u2019s accustomed to staying outdoors, away from the others except for Good as Gold. They tolerate each other.\u201d So there\u2019s a one-eyed horse out here at night, under the moon. \u201cHe\u2019s a challenge,\u201d she says. \u201cBut he\u2019s worth it.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrave Heart is real pushy. He tore my rotator cuff nudging me the way he would another horse. He doesn\u2019t realize I\u2019m not strong enough!<\/p>\n

\u201cReno is the only one I\u2019ve adopted from the Bureau of Land Management. He\u2019s been here 18 years. Little children can ride him. He\u2019s our ambassador. He spends all of his time with a burro named Chalupa, who\u2019s been here three years. They\u2019re inseparable.<\/p>\n

\u201cLady was black when we first got her. We\u2019ve grown gray together. She\u2019s taken such good care of me! See how friendly she is? She\u2019s 21.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s Nevada\u2013he was chronicled in these pages a year ago [\u201cThe Misfits,\u201d Winterguide 2004] when he was at Bush Brook for a week of \u201csensitizing.\u201d It seems to have taken. Still owned by a Buxton woman, \u201cNevada\u2019s now under the saddle,\u201d says<\/p>\n

Jerome. \u201cHe went to the Cumberland Fair with a couple of our horses.<\/p>\n

\u201cElephants never forget and never forgive,\u201d Jerome says. \u201cWell, horses never forget but they do<\/em> forgive, and we have that in our favor.<\/p>\n

In successful cases the moment of forgiveness is quite poignant. Ellie Rose of Norfolk, Massachusetts, adopted Shamray from Jerome in 1991 when \u201cshe was two and as willful as any two-year-old child.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first, she\u2019d strike out with her front legs\u2013rear up,\u201d Rose says on the telephone. \u201cAt other times, you could groom her or put the saddle on her. But she always had a very good nature. I think she was testing to see how far she could go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Raising Shamray has turned out to be well worth the ride. \u201cYou need to be patient,\u201d the 50-year-old mother of three advises anyone interested in owning a wild horse. \u201cYou need to be understanding. And you just need to love them\u2026With mustangs, you need to get their trust. Once you have their trust, they\u2019ll do anything for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

T<\/strong>he spunky Jerome, who has ridden since she was a girl, identifies with the plight of wild mustangs. Like Gable tells Marilyn Monroe, \u201cThey\u2019re nothing but misfit horses, honey.\u201d But even Gable\u2019s weather-beaten cowboy is seduced by their free-spirited beauty and eventually gives up mustanging, saying: \u201cIt\u2019s like roping a dream now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jerome often wonders if her dream of saving the mustangs isn\u2019t equally elusive.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes I ask myself if this isn\u2019t, at my age, part of senility,\u201dshe jokes about her passionate commitment to these horses who are directly descended from horses brought in by the Spaniards. \u201cI love horses. I always have. I don\u2019t know where it comes from. I guess it\u2019s just born in you.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw my first wild horse in an old Western when I was a kid\u2013and we\u2019re talking now [the] early to mid 1940s,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd when I saw the wild horses, I knew I needed to have one of those.\u201d<\/p>\n

This winter, Jerome is surrounded by 30 misfits, \u201cmore than I can really handle or afford,\u201d and keeping them all has required a quiet heroism. It costs $1,500 a month to board, feed, and provide veterinary care for the mustangs \u201cthough, realistically, that figure should be about $4,000,\u201d says Jerome, an LPN who came out of retirement to care for nuns in a convent infirmary three nights a week to support her beloved equines. \u201cI need a slush fund,\u201d she says as the stable door opens to show a light snow beginning to fall.<\/p>\n

The mustang rescue, which received its nonprofit 501(c) status in 2003, scrapes by on Jerome\u2019s income, spotty donations, and fundraisers like its ongoing bottle drive, a raffle, and a dance at the local VFW hall. She relies on her husband of 44 years, Bradford, a Secret Service retiree; three of her four children who live in the area; and up to a dozen volunteers to keep the operation running, albeit at a slow gait.<\/p>\n

Volunteer Chrissy Parise, a senior at the University of New England, spends about 12 hours a week at Bush Brook working with the mustangs, a breed that has captured her heart. \u201cThe most rewarding part is when you have an animal that\u2019s scared of you, and you work with him, and then he\u2019s, like, your best friend,\u201d says Parise, 21.<\/p>\n

So what happens if you don\u2019t rescue a mus-tang? \u201cMost of them would go right into Canada and slaughter,\u201d Jerome says. \u201cIt\u2019s illegal to capture or shoot any wild mustang on govern- ment land.\u201d Though necessity forced Napoleon\u2019s troops to eat their horses during the seige on Russia, now horsemeat is in demand as\u00a0 \u201cmeat for gourmet European tables.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want that stressed,\u201d Jerome instructs, \u201cbecause if they were going to Third World countries to feed the starving\u2026I wouldn\u2019t like it, but I might be able to live with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In naming her nonprofit Ever After Mustang Rescue, Jerome has left out the word too obvious to mention. \u201cIt just goes back to childhood and all the stories I loved that ended happily ever after,\u201d she explains. \u201cI still look for that in my stories and my movies. I like that\u2013happily ever after. We hope it turns out that way for these guys.\u201d<\/p>\n

For information about adopting or fostering a mustang, or volunteering or becoming a drill-team member at Ever After Mustang Rescue, visit <\/strong>www.mustangrescue.org<\/strong><\/a>, or contact Mona Jerome at 463 West Street, Biddeford 04005, <\/strong>mustangs1@earthlink.net<\/strong><\/a> or 284-7721.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The pretty horses that dot the pastures at Bush Brook Farm do not have pretty pasts. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18259,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[966],"class_list":["post-4117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-classic-maine-stories","tag-ever-after-mustang-rescue"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4117"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18261,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4117\/revisions\/18261"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}