“This may be a most atypical Pet Patrol report,” the disc jockey on WLNG said in prefacing an announcement about missing pets last Thursday evening.
Unsure if it was not in fact a prank, the D.J. relayed the call that had just come to the Sag Harbor radio station: Two baby goats and a pony were missing from their Wainscott home, a split-rail fence enclosure on residential property in the hamlet.
It was true. Blackie, the pony, and his constant companions Ozzy and Binky Bob, who are kids, or young goats, were nowhere to be seen. “My cousin called at 5:43 asking if everybody was home,” Skylar McBride told The Star. “I looked out the window, and my husband’s horse was still there, so I assumed everybody was there.” But upon walking outside, she faced an unwelcome surprise: “We were missing the pony and goats,” she said.
The animals “are heavily fenced in,” said Ms. McBride, a lifelong keeper of horses who used to show them in exhibitions, “and still found a way to get out.” Ozzy, one of the goats, who was named for the late musician Ozzy Osbourne, “likes to jump over everything,” she said. “We normally just tolerate it, where he could jump out and roam the front yard, and he comes and goes as he pleases.” But last Thursday, “he jumped the main gate, and when he did, he undid the latch, and the self-closing system didn’t close all the way, and the pony shimmied right through.”
Because the three have bonded, it was only natural that Binky Bob joined his companions in the expedition to parts unknown. “They do not go anywhere without each other,” Ms. McBride said.
The keeper of the animals is young Finnley McBride, who is 2 and a half. “Every time we took him somewhere, like farm stands, he always wanted to do pony rides,” Ms. McBride said. “It was getting expensive, and we found that it was actually cheaper to get him his own pony. He got a pony from Santa for Christmas.”
Finnley, of course, was distraught upon going outdoors with his mother to see the gate open and his besties nowhere to be found. “It was scary,” Ms. McBride said, “because these three animals are our son’s entire world. He keeps them, he cleans up after them, he hangs out with them all day. When he came outside with me, saw the gate open, and that his friends were gone, he was hysterical.”
“We jumped in the truck and figured we’d go down the road and get them back, but we couldn’t see them,” Ms. McBride continued. No one at East Hampton Town Airport had seen them. “We saw people on the side of the road, and everyone kept telling us they hadn’t seen them.” Over the course of a two-hour search, “we did not see them anywhere.”
One report of the wandering animals had been logged at East Hampton Town Police headquarters, Ms. McBride said. After the search, “we figured they’d gone into the woods and we’d try again in the morning.” Finnley, she said, “was heartbroken.”
But all was not lost. “While driving along Route 114 from East Hampton toward Sag Harbor, I saw a pony and two goats crossing the road,” said Pablo Garcia of East Hampton. “All the drivers stopped, showing our kindness toward the animals.” Seeing that they were unattended, Mr. Garcia snapped a few pictures and posted one on the Nextdoor social media site in an effort to alert their owners. “We all waited as the animals stayed calm,” he said of himself and fellow motorists. “After several minutes, all I could do was spread the word and then continue on my way. That moment highlighted everyone’s humanity toward those animals.”
Having given up the search for the night and deciding to return home, the family noticed motorists on Route 114 braking en masse. “We went up to 114 and they were standing in the middle of the road,” Ms. McBride said of Blackie, Ozzy, and Binky Bob. The chase was not yet concluded, however. “The second the pony saw my husband, he ran down a private drive off 114,” Ms. McBride said, “and the goats followed, because he’s the ringleader. He ran to someone’s garage, and we were able to corner them and catch the pony.” Once Blackie had been secured, “it was easy to get the goats.”
All’s well that ends well, and while reports of renegade horses and farm animals were once common in the pages of The Star, those days are long gone. “I think a lot of people are shocked,” Ms. McBride said, “that there are still those kinds of animals in this town.”
