A Unicorn Sets the Record Straight

It infuriates me the way unicorns are depicted these days. You’ve seen it, too: the cutsie cards in the Hallmark stores and the simpy cartoons on TV, always surrounded by rainbows and pink clouds and little chunks of colored candy drifting through the air. As if we’re some kind of soft and pettable toy, something little girls keep in their bedrooms along with posters of bunnies and their stuffed baby lambies.

They fantasize about meeting one of us. They think they’d cuddle up and stroke our skin and maybe even snap a selfie, if their grasping little fingers are big enough to hold Mommy’s phone. Let me explain a few things.

First of all, they’re not going to find us. We may be the size of a horse, but we know how to keep ourselves hidden. I’ve had hikers come within two feet of me with never a clue. Second, we aren’t cute and cuddly. Far from it. Our fur is matted from scrambling though the brush, and most of us have bad breath and a sour attitude.

On the rare occasions that humans spot us, it doesn’t turn out well for anybody. Even when they do manage to escape and tell, no one believes them. Their stories just don’t jibe with the popular image.

As for me, I live in a nature preserve adjacent to a couple of human housing developments. We’re theoretically fenced in, but a little bit of neglected chain link isn’t much of a deterrent. When I say “we,” I don’t mean me and other unicorns. I haven’t seen another of my kind in eight years, and I have no desire to.

“We” refers to me and the coyotes and the bobcats. When the rabbit and squirrel populations plummet or when yappy little dogs go missing, people blame the carnivores they know about. Most of the time they’re right, but not always. Horses may be herbivores, but here’s a news bulletin for you: we’re not horses.

I thought human depiction of unicorns was already as bad as it could get, but recently I heard something that even I found a bit startling. It was a new extreme in the insults the two-legged world heaps on us. A couple of human hikers, not satisfied to stay in their eyesore houses where they belong, were sitting on stones in my territory and having a discussion. They were talking about a display at a local outdoor mall. The theme was enough to make me gag: it was “Rainbow and Unicorn Days.”

One of them had taken their children, and they—both the grown-ups and the kids—were all giggly and rapturous about what they described as a wonderful family event. Apparently there were life-size stuffed unicorns and unicorn piñatas and unicorn smoothies and several billboard-sized pictures of multi-color unicorns prancing and batting at ice creams cones with sprinkles. By now you should have figured out that no self-respecting real-life unicorn would ever be caught prancing or batting.

I should have left bad enough alone. This miles-away nonsense didn’t actually harm me. But sometimes I just can’t sleep thinking about the garbage people perpetuate. One night I suffered a disquieting and distasteful dream: I was trapped in a playpen in a child’s bedroom, and the insipidly grinning kid was pelting me with nerf balls. I woke up with an overload of restless energy and decided to go see for myself just what kind of repulsive drivel this mall outrage was putting forth.

It was an ideal night for it, if there can ever be a good night for such thing. The moon was a crescent, plenty of light for my excellent night vision but dark enough for me to remain unseen. I started by swimming the river the separates my preserve from the houses on the other side. Once I reached the far bank, I needed to cross three miles of residential neighborhoods and a couple four-lane highways.

It’s less risky than you might think. I don’t go “off the reservation” often—not much reason to—but I’ve never had trouble when I did. I run through back yards, jump fences, and wait for a good carless stretch to cross streets. If people spot me, they assume it’s a deer. If someone does catch a glimpse of my horn, they’re not going to be sure of what they saw, and even it they blabber, on one is going to buy it.

The mall in question is one where parking spaces are spread around the outside. There’s a central pedestrian area surrounded for most of its circumference by two-story buildings full of shops. They keep a few streetlights on all night, but they’re easy to avoid. As long as I stayed close to the buildings, there wasn’t much chance of discovery.

There’s an open area with grass and some benches and a stage, and that’s where they mount their events. I stood in the outdoor seating area of a pizza restaurant and scoped it out. My eyesight allows me to see distant objects in a great deal of detail. It helps when hunting for dinner at my neighboring development. The longer I stood, the more I could see, and the more I saw, the madder I got.

There was a table covered with unicorn piñatas, of hues that were surely invented just to make me puke. Pink and sissy green and pale blue and a kind of putrid yellow. There were billboards with unicorns, beasts of colors that could never exist in nature, looking hither and yon with facial expressions that any real unicorn would rather die than wear. The centerpiece of this travesty was a large model unicorn that dominated the stage.

The people in my park had used the word “life-sized,” but that didn’t begin to describe it. It was three times as big as I am. It had a pink head, a blue body, and alternating green and yellow legs. The horn stood at an unnatural angle, pointing more upward than forward. That horn was ringed by lights like a Christmas tree. Maybe someone was supposed to turn them off, but no one had. The lights winked as if mocking me and daring me to do something.

The poor creature’s head was cocked toward me with a pitiful smile. It had eyelashes. Curled eyelashes, mind you! All in all, it was a demeaning caricature of a female (no, we don’t call them fillies) beckoning a potential mate to come hither. However, the shape and muscle definition were those of a male. Nothing under its belly or between its legs identified it as a member of either sex. It was blasphemous.

My heart was racing, and I was breathing hard enough for anyone nearby to hear. That’s not good for an animal that prides itself on remaining calm and well-hidden, but I was about to lose it. If I hadn’t let my anger build, I could have trotted away. But I stood there past the point of no return, and something in me snapped.

I charged. I upended the table and scattered the piñatas. I leaped at a billboard and ripped it with my horn. It laid a gash into the obscene pink belly. Then I turned my attention to the sacrilege on the stage.

With the most aggressive running start I could muster, I sped toward the desecration and leapt onto the platform. I gored the repulsive beast in the belly, just forward of the hind legs. I tore sideways and opened a gash that extended most of the body’s length. Wads of packing material poured forth from the wound. I shook off the debris and bounded toward the front legs. I couldn’t reach the head, so I whacked at a foreleg. On the third blow I broke it. The lower leg dangled from the knee, but the three remaining limbs were enough to hold the faux beast in place.

I was about to attack the other foreleg when a man yelled, “Hey! What the hell are you doing!” He was running toward me, coming from the pizza place I’d left a minute ago, and he carried a rifle. I ducked under the ripped-open trunk and smacked the still-standing foreleg.

The animal’s throat burst open above my head. Packing spilled out as I heard the shot. I turned to the see the man dashing closer and hefting the gun for another attempt. He was out of control; it was pure luck that he’d put a bullet that close. I jumped from the stage and charged him.

He had no chance to get a bead on me before I closed the distance. He tripped and fell just before I reached him, and that’s what saved his life. My horn grazed his fallen form and ripped a long tear through the back of his jacket.

Someone yelled, “Vince! What’s happening!” and two more men came running from an angle to my right. They also had weapons.

“I’m being attacked by a unicorn!” Vince yelled. “A real live one!”

Taking out one man with a gun wasn’t much of a problem, but I didn’t like the way the odds had changed. I showed the posse my hindquarters and barreled off in the direction of home. The newcomers got off a couple of shots but were too rattled to fire with any accuracy.

It was close to dawn when I arrived at the preserve. I went to my favorite hiding place and burrowed in. I’m more diurnal than nocturnal, but I can go either way if need be. I was going to sleep like a baby unicorn (no, it’s not called a foal) and slumber well into the day.

I thought about Vince as I drifted off. How much effort would he expend trying to convince people of what he’d seen? He’d probably knock it off before they called the paddy wagon. The thought of him might have made me smile, if unicorns were capable of such a thing.