A decade or so ago, a soliciter from London came over to Houston for the first time in his life to appear in federal court with me on a case that we were handling for a mutual client.
My friend was quite surprised by Houston’s huge trees, numerous lakes, bayous, and wildlife, particularly near my home in The Woodlands. He candidly admitted that even most sophisticated Londoners have the misconception that Houston is in the Wild West of movie lore, located in the sagebrush and dusty desert terrain of far West Texas. This Chronicle article won’t do much to correct similar misconceptions:
A police officer who struck a runaway horse on a freeway was critically injured early today, authorities say.
Several other motorists struck the horse’s carcass on Interstate 45 before police could shut down the freeway’s northbound lanes.
The injured officer, who was off-duty and driving a personal vehicle, managed to pull over to the side of the freeway after the collision but the top of his car was sheared off by the impact, said David Gutierrez, a Houston Police Department accident investigator.
He said the horse was running southbound in the northbound lanes of I-45, just north of the I-610 loop, when the first collision occurred.
The injured officer, who had to be rescued from his vehicle using the Jaws of Life, was listed in critical condition at Ben Taub General Hospital’s trauma center.
It was unknown how the horse got on the roadway.
While investigators were waiting for Harris County animal control officers to remove the horse, several other vehicles struck the carcass.
Hilarious! You’re right–only in Houston.
Of course, I seem to remember another incident with a car, horse, and police officer involved… 🙂
That was a mall parking lot security officer, not a police officer. But you got the horse and car parts right. ;^)
I know when I travel in Europe, most think that we Texans are all rabid greedy war-mongering neo-cons with ranches and oil wells riding horses everywhere. Of course many of us Texans think the French are jerks. Prejudices and perception is reality to too many of us! BTW: I’d hardly count The Woodlands as Houston.
I don’t know about The Woodlands not counting as being Houston — The Woodlands and Memorial Park have a lot in common. Also, The Woodlands’ master plan presumes eventual annexation by the City of Houston.
Well, other than no one resides in Memorial Park and it doesn’t have a slew of for profit businesses and it is frequented by a wide mix of multi-cultural people and it wasn’t designed by a developer and it is truly close to world class stores and museums and to downtown business & live performance art and eclectic music venues, I guess The Woodlands does have a lot in common with Memorial Park. As far as the presumption of the The Woodlands’ Master Plan (kinda sounds pre-WW2 German, huh?), I guess it foreshadowed DeLay’s gerrymandering. mmmm no wonder it sounded…..never mind