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When a horse commits suicide by hanging itself in its stall, that’s noose.
Appleton Post Crescent (Appleton, Wisconsin) Dec 19, 1928
Posted by Mugira Fredrick at blogspot.com
AN IOWA cow committed suicide the other day, out of grief for the loss of her calf. After following the butcher’s wagon to the slaughter house and giving vent to a series of agonizing moans, she deliberately made her way to the river, waded in beyond her depth and was drowned.
Gettysburg Compiler (Gettysburg, Pennsylvania) Jul 26, 1872
A Virginia horse committed suicide in the James River at Petersburg last week. He walked out to the pierhead of a wharf, and looked around as if choosing a spot, jumped into the river at a point where the water was deepest. Persons on the wharf, seeing that he was drowning, got a rope around him and drew him into shallow water, but as soon as he touched bottom he got loose again, and wading out some yards further in the stream, put his head beneath the surface, and kept it there until he drowned.
The Bucks County Gazette (Bristol, Pennsylvania) Aug 26, 1875
A Mad Cow Commits Suicide.
From the Columbus, Ga., Daily Times.
Yesterday, about noon, upper Broad and Oglethorpe streets were thrown inot a state of excitement by the strange antics of a cow, which gave every indication of madness. It was a fine young animal, belonging to Mrs. Purcell. She was very vicious, fighting other cows, etc; she ran into a wagon, and, with rolling eyes, kicked up her heels and snorted around generally. Efforts were made to catch her, but they were in vain, and she finally ran into the river, near Mott’s Green, and was drowned. The body was caught near the upper bridge.
Her conduct is inexplicable. Some have advanced the idea that perhaps she was drunk, from eating the seed and strainings after wine making from blackberries, thrown into the street. How about this we cannot say, but her death entails a heavy loss on Mrs. Purcell.
The Atlanta Constitution (Atlanta, Georgia) Jul 6, 1882
Horse Commits Suicide.
The Wabash Railway, in a damage suit instituted by J.M. Sauvinette to recover the value of a horse which met his death on the Wabash tracks, sets up the novel defense that the horse committed suicide. Perhaps the animal had been reading advertisements of the Wabash, and got it into his head that it was the direct route to heaven. –Globe-Democrat, Feb. 27, 1903.
Decatur Herald (Decatur, Illinois) Mar 3, 1903
HORSE COMMITS SUICIDE.
Deliberately Butts Head Against Wall Until it Falls Dead.
Cincinnati, Sept 30. A horse owned by Joseph Kamphouse, of this city, deliberately committed suicide by butting its head against a stone wall. The animal was hitched to a buggy left standing in the street while the owner went into a place of business for a few minutes. It walked slowly toward the wall a square away and fell over dead after striking its head against the wall ten or twelve times. A score of persons witnessed the suicide.
Kamphouse declares he knows of no reason why the horse should destroy itself and will inform the President of the circumstances, although he will run the rist of being called a nature faker.
Trenton Evening Times (Trenton, New Jersey) Sep 30, 1907
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Found Drowned, and Its Owner Declares Animal’s Act was Deliberate.
Special to the Washington Post.
Glennville, N.Y., July 6. — It was so hot on Wednesday that a horse owned by J. M. Cook, went to a brook and drowned itself, and William Beekman, the constable of the town of Greenburgh, was prostrated with heat after carrying his big badge around for five hours doing duty on the warm roads.
Cook’s horse was found by Beekman, with its head under water. He declared that the horse had not drowned itself, just drunk itself to deat. Cook said it was purely a case of suicide.
Washington Post, The (Washington, D.C.) Jul 7, 1911
HORSE COMMITTED SUICIDE.
[New York Sun.]
According to the Humane Society of Spokane a horse deliberately committed suicide there the other day. The animal was decrepit and has been deserted. Too weak to eat solid food he was tethered in front of a patch of clover. He sampled the clover, and then, according to the report, deliberately plunged headlong off a bluff overlooking the river a few feet away and was later found dead.
Naturalist have frequently related the suicide of animals through grief. Probably the oddest one of all is tht told by Dr. Ezekiel Henderson, the traveller, of a tigress whose cubs had been taken from her by the agents of one of the large circus menageries of the United States. The party came upon the tiger’s den while hunting in Asia for exhibits. They took four cubs and crossed a near-by river with them, destroying the primitive tree trunk bridge after they reached the other side.
The tigress returning and finding her cubs gone bounded by scent down to where the party had crossed the stream. She knew of the tree trunk, having made used of it herself before. When she saw it was gone she uttered the most piercing and lamentable howls and cries. The party with her cubs came back to the river bank, attracted by the noise. The tigress when she was her cubs gave vent to an unearthly shriek. Then crouching, rising and recrouching again several times, she deliberately sprang from the river bank. The river was five times wider than she could have been expected to leap, and leaping animals are close calculators. She fell 25 feet into the stream. She came up once, turned toward the distant shore, threw her head back and sank for good. A clear case of suicide the doctor called it.
Washington Post, The (Washington, D.C.) Jul 13, 1913
YesterYear Once More 