As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
I so enjoy finding atmospheric irregularities never spoken of previously, and hidden away in memoirs of other seemingly more important history.
What this oddity I am to bring you is from John Finerty of the Chicago Times, circa 1879 AD in the year of our Lord. The overview was he was correspondent with General Nelson Miles department engaged in clearing the Canadian border of terrorist Sioux, who were part of Sitting Bulls now well armed thugs, supplied by Canadians.
This was in extreme northeastern Montana on the Milk River. What the setting was, was a terrific storm had built, and washed in a deluge over the troops on a night march. I leave the author provide the tidbits.
"The clouds and the atmosphere denoted the approach of a furious storm and we were ordered to counter-march so as to go into camp with our train. I think every one who participated in that night march will agree with me in pronouncing it one of the most disagreeable ever experienced. The rain came down in blinding, bewildering splashes. The wind blew a hurricane. The thunder absolutely shook the ground.
The night was pitch-dark, except when the fierce and fitful flashes of forked lightning revealed the fast-moving ranks for a second, and then left them wrapped in impenetrable blackness, except for a peculiar phosphorescent glow on the horses' ears. We had to keep close up on the heels of each other's animals, in order to make it possible for us to move at all."
Finerty, John F. (John Frederick), 1846-1908.
As you already know the subject of this examination, I had never heard of horses carrying such a strong electrical charge that their ears glowed. I believe if Finerty and the boys had known how much danger they were in, they would have skidaddled pronto, as what appears to have been taking place was charged ions were being built up in the long parade of horses on the march. Not in singular, but in group.
Think of this as rubbing your feet on a carpet and then discharging in static electricity.
Fortunately no discharge took place, or perhaps over 100 horses and men would have been dead.
This is puzzling as people in groups do not readily seem to be struck, but cattle seem to have a preponderance for getting stuck by lightning in groups. A neighbor once lost over a dozen head in such a strike which I had assumed was caused by metal barbed wire carrying the charge, but after reading this phosphorescent glow on these horses ears, it might be a reality that furred animals carry more static electric charge of ions, and sometimes it just reaches up from the ground to the skies and causes a lightning strike.
I have heard of idiots casting lures in fishing, and having them suspend in air, along with the plastic lines singing in the air.......to my Mom checking fence and having her hair stand up which was not the brightest of things to be doing. This glowing about a horses ears though is like St. Elmo's Fire, but not yet ball lightning as the charge has not been created, and what one is witnessing is apparently the sort of aggitated atmosphere between a horse's ears, creating a sort of light bulb.
I ponder the idea if riding faster would produce more of a charge, or if one dismounted would that mean six feet on the ground, creating more charge, as to what might be away out of this.
It sort of is a matter though that riding for a gulley might get one drown and gulleys have trees, so having a charged charger arcing to a cottonwood 60 feet high in the air, might just be the worst of it.
I am presuming what saved the men and beasts besides God, was the lightning must have been chain or sheet lightning in being cloud to cloud and not ground strikes. It would have been one hell of a last stand in an entire army tits up on the Milk River without an arrow or bullet in them.
Few things worse than dead critters from lightning. When I was mucho verde, I had a pretty little Hereford heifer, as sweet as a cherry red fox I caught once with bright white markings, and satan murdered her by lightning strike.
Yeah the old man had like 120 head in that pasture, and who gets toasted, but my little heifer. I never have recovered from that loss.
This though might save your life. If your horses ears a glowing, then it is probably past common sense time to come in out of the rain.
.....was just thinking in lightning arcing into a powder wagon.........that sure would finish off any survivors who were saved from the electrocution.
Anyway, if your horses ears glow, you got problems, and if you are in a storm and get struck by lightning and your horses ears did not glow, it is reasonable to conclude you should not have been in the storm and even if your horses ears are not glowing like Ben Franklin's key on a kite, you probably are beyond caring about scientific anomolies for an eternity.
"The lightning at times seemed to be showered down as in sparks."
Finerty, John F. (John Frederick), 1846-1908.
nuff said
agtG
