For the past month, horses have been terrorizing the streets and landscaping of the suburban people Upper Miller Creek. At first glance, residents immediately thought that the horses were just those of a neighboring farm that escaped. Weeks were passing and the horses were slowly creeping across the streets. Neighbors were starting to gossip in confusion, for no one knew who the horses belonged to. The first couple of weeks, residents thought that the horses were cute, and at the very least not the traditional deer, but after the first week passed, the people were starting to get frustrated. When calling the sheriff’s department, not even the homeowners couldn’t believe where the horses came from.
When Animal Control was sent to determine who the horses belonged to through a chip reader, a shocking truth was revealed. The horses did not have a chip, so it was determined to the sheriff’s department that the horses were wild. When the news spread across the suburb of Upper Miller Creek, the next question was “what’s next?” Unfortunately, nothing could be done, as the horses couldn’t be relocated because they are wild and incapable of cooperation. Residents, regardless of how down-to-earth they are, were very frustrated with the news that they couldn’t do anything about the horses. The creatures were causing major and expensive havoc on landscaping in the neighborhood, so the frustration was suburban-wide. When talking to residents, they expressed either frustration with doing simple tasks of mowing the lawn with giant hoove craters, dodging messes of waste, waiting for horses to cross, patches of dead grass due to horse urination, and broken fences. Asking around the neighborhood, the question of where the horses were before Upper Miller Creek was on everyone’s mind, so they started to ask around.
Residents reported news of the horses being in Lolo. Geographically speaking, Lolo is a hill away from the Upper Miller Creek area, so it’s possible that the same horses that terrorized Lolo are the same team in there. The people of the suburbs were then given hope that the horses will leave elsewhere to a land that better suits their needs. In Upper Miller Creek, there is usually a creek that runs through the suburbs, but as of now it is dry, so there is no source of water. Oddly enough, the horses still find enough resources to survive.
After contacting residents within the neighborhood, an article from 2019 was brought to attention. The article was of a wild horse spotting in 2019, but it wasn’t in Missoula or Lolo. The same team of horses that are in Missoula County is the same team reported in the Stevensville area in 2019. Lolo and Upper Miller Creek residents wondered how they could be so unlucky that of all of the directions and of all of the miles that the destructive horses ended up in the Missoula area.
Uneducated people that don’t live in Montana think that we ride horses everywhere we go, but that misconception is scarily starting to become more of a reality in terms of the “old west”. Wild horses have been terrorizing even aspects of property systems in Trails End and the people are frustrated and over it. Hopefully, as the winter approaches and the snow starts to fall, the wild horses will move on and seek water and food elsewhere. Until then, suburbian residents need to look at the bigger picture and enjoy that they’re getting a change of scenery that isn’t white-tailed deer.
