Heaven Better Have Horses

“I’ve wrestled with alligators,

I’ve tussled with a whale,

I done handcuffed lightning

And thrown thunder in jail.

You know I’m bad,

Just last week, I murdered a rock,

Injured a stone, hospitalized a brick.

I’m so mean, I made medicine sick.”

- Muhammad Ali 

I think Leo Kuntz could have said this about his own life - which I recently learned came to an end. As a kid growing up in Nothing-Town, North Dakota, Leo had to fight to keep his teeth. In Vietnam, Leo had to fight for his life, having been shot and left for dead in a ditch. And back home after the war, Leo had to fight mightily with prostate cancer, as the result of being engulfed in fogs of Agent Orange over and over again.

And for the last fifty years, Leo dedicated what was left of his bullet-ridden, cancer-stricken, beat-to-hell being to saving the last wild horses of North Dakota. It was a mad, Quixotic fight, as there was no money in it, no glory in it, no nothing in it other than it was the right thing to do. He’d lost fingers, been kicked by crazed horses more times than he could remember, and endured a lifetime of bitterly cold winters - all to protect these endangered animals.

It all could have made him a bitter man, but it didn’t. Instead, it made him a tough-as-nails, soft-spoken, reflective cowboy. He’s a hero to me, and it broke my heart to hear of his death. Heaven better have horses or he ain’t going.