Spooking a horse in a rainforest

[annarti]

Setting~ Deep in a tropical rainforest; think South-East Asia more than South American jungle. Monkeys, squawky parrots and other birds, billions of insects and mosquitoes. Hot and humid, storms like clockwork around 4 in the afternoon. Quite mountainous but relatively flat where they are now. Kind of like this, but not so bad at ground level. They

Comments

[chalcopyrite]

Feeding the horses: I recall reading that a lot of the equine casualties in WWI were due to horses having inexperienced handlers who didn't know how or how much to feed them. More data-dased

[annarti]

I don't suppose you'd know of any one particular tropical leafy plant that'd do the job? Just because I like to exhaust real world possibilities for relatively mundane issues if I possibly can. The less fantasy cop-outs the better :D I can easily just shove a few million suitable real-world plants into the rainforest, otherwise, 'yellow-flowered horse-leaf' it is ;)

In my personal experience of the tropics, getting properly dry is hard enough at the best of times, let alone days from civilisation and with no hint of a breeze on the forest floor. Methinks the horsies are going to get some skin problems. Sorry, guys. Never mind, it's fantasy, we have a healer for you :D

And yes, it's actually my intention to knock this horse off--it'll be breaking its neck after the bung ankle sends it over, so not even magic healing will save the thing--so all good there!

[annarti]

Sounds like this is all stuff I should really be establishing several chapters back before they even end up in the middle of freaking nowhere, since it's all more tropics-related in general and not necessarily something that would change too much whether they're in a city or way off the beaten track. Some sort of powder (maybe even ash from the fire, once it's cooled?) would probably work to draw out moisture, I'd imagine. As you say, it's a sodding rainforest, there'll be something in there :D

[annarti]

Sorted! I love this community <3 You'll definitely be getting more odd horsey questions from me in the future. What I'd really love is to rope some horsey person into reading the whole story through when it's finally finished, but that won't be for some years yet. There are bound to be errors I haven't even thought of with that lot.

Thank you for all your help! Absolutely invaluable!

[chalcopyrite]

I thought getting actually dry would be a problem. *wry g* Do the best they can on the feet, take as much tack as possible off at night (would be my guess for best course -- cut down on trapped moisture), use natural anti-fungal properties of the plants around them, and handwave the rest to being adapted for the area? Since these aren't Northern European horses being suddenly plonked down in Sumatra-equivalent...

[annarti]

I've got them removing pretty much everything overnight, save tethering them to a tree to keep them from wandering off, so that should help. Oh, and they haven't borne the weight of a rider in a while, either, lucky creatures.

I reckon they've got more solid hooves, somehow. High calcium levels, idk. SOUNDS LEGIT. They're ancient/medieval, they don't know what the hell calcium is. And they get it from their favourite plant, the yellow-flowered horse-leaf. With the information I'm hearing, it sounds like something the horse itself is going to be adapting to, rather than being fixed because they came from somewhere else.

[chalcopyrite]

Extra-dense, damp-resistant feet! ::waves arms madly:: Sounds legit to me!

(Thank goodness for yellow-flowered horse-leaf, which all horses love! *g*)