Did a parade once. Nothing was much of an issue except for the Roller Rink Mascot…a giant pink bunny with floppy ears on roller skates.
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We are also next to an airport where hot air balloons take off from. The horses surprisingly don’t care.
The airport also hosts a skydiving school. Parachutes fall from the sky multiple times a day. I thought the horses would care, nope. Zero reaction.
But I think the weirdest thing at my farm is our ever-growing herd of white bucks. There was one, we suspect he is a white sika. Then two white white-tailed deer arrived. How many people have two species of white deer on their farm?!? The first photo with the WTD, their racks have gotten HUGE since that was taken in the early spring, I just don’t have a close up photo.
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Didn’t a certain carrot stick toting friend already try that? Hahah
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I had a hotter than hot Hackney pony. He had lived near an Air Force base for the ten years before I bought him, so planes (including fighter jets) did not bother him. That was a good thing as we lived between the Air Force base and the Air Force Academy, and we had some interesting planes going overhead on home football game days. @chestnutmarebeware, this was just outside Parker, CO.
Then came the day that a neighbor had a friend come visit by helicopter. The helicopter landed just as the Hackney and I were going by, and the pony lost his mind. We survived, but it wasn’t fun. I was trying to figure out how he could live near an Air Force base and not be used to low flying helicopters.
After I had to retire the Hackney, I drove my much more laid back large pony instead. He was nearly unflappable, until the day we were trotting along the bridle path that surrounded our neighborhood, and someone at a nearby park flew a drone overhead. Oh, my, instant meltdown. The only way to get home was past the park, and people in the park joined me in yelling to the drone operator to land the drone so I could get by.
Rebecca
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EXACTLY! Minis are the physical embodiment in this world of what they’re trying to save their souls from! 
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They look like chupacabras to me!
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A colleague once told me that was exactly what a PP demo reminded him of.
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Our old farm had a neighbor with a cannon. He set off at odd times for his own, private, reasons.
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That would scare the poop out of me, never mind the horses!
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Yeah, we’re both war veterans, so it was hard not to react.
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My neighbors husband is building a helicopter.
It has been about 2 years now. Our horses are used to him hauling it out in front of his hanger and letting it run a bit as he fiddles with instruments, tuning, engine and other helicoptery things. He does get it off the ground a few feet and one day flew it over his fence line and into their lower pasture (and back). Yup…she has 4 horses on the property too. Everyone (our horses and hers) have been pretty darn good about it.
Oh…and then there was the day in 2020 someone at the end of our dead end road hosted a Trump rally of sorts. Complete with one or two of the children/daughter in laws speaking. Politics aside, I had to prove to two sheriffs that I lived on the road before I could pass. Everyone attending the rally had to find parking elsewhere and walk the 0.5 mile down our road to the event space. I considered loading them up in my pickup and charging a shuttle fee!
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Many years ago, when I was working the night shift, I awoke to the thump,thump, thump of a helicopter. It was very loud. I ran outside to see a military type helicopter, big, with two rotors and an open side door containing many men in camouflage clothing. The helicopter was at tree top level and my horses were panicking. This happened several times.
One day I was in a store in town and I overheard the man in front of me bragging that he was a helicopter pilot.
Me: So it’s you flying that huge helicopter over my farm , waking me up and terrifying my horses?
Man: Yes!
Me: I have a bone to pick with you. Why are you doing this?
Man: We’re looking for marijuana plants.
Me: Why are you flying so low?
Man: Well, some people plant marijuana plants under trees so they can’t be seen from the air. We fly low so the tree branches blow around and we can see under them.
Me: You idiots. You’re kidding, right? You’re using a military helicopter to try to find individual pot plants?
Man: Well, yes.
Me: Well cut it out. You can come on my property and search everywhere and then leave me alone. I work nights , you’re waking me up and you are going to run my horses through a fence.
Man: Oh, we pay for any damage to livestock.
Me: I’ve raised those horses from when they were six month old and they are now 14 and 15 respectively. They are not “livestock” to me.
Man: Oh.
I was very angry.
They didn’t take me up on my offer to let them search, and they didn’t come back.
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Remember this? (it’s very blurry but you get the drift) Someones nice jumper joined the bicycle race; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkFW9zPVpDA
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A few years back, the state selectively logged steep hillsides along the highway through the Columbia River Gorge Scenic Monument, just south of our small farm. Getting the logs/trees out to the road to load onto trucks was going to be a neat trick. Well that neat trick was a massive Sikorsky helicopter. You could hear it long before it topped the ridge, popping up a 100 yards from our pasture where my OTTB was standing at attention, all a-quiver. He was fascinated by the giant whopping machine until the raft of logs cleared the tree line. Then it was a monster! I moved him and his old buddy to a field where they couldn’t see it anymore, so there was no more running, but he still watched the helicopter for hours as it flew back and forth—all was good as long as the logs stayed out of sight.
At two different boarding barns, helicopters moving loads of cut Christmas trees next door caused a stir each year, but the horses got used to it pretty quickly.
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A herd of about 30 Hereford cattle ran through a fence and onto my friend’s property after a low flying hot air balloon spooked them. She said that they were already nervous, but the release of the flame in the balloon to gain height, and the noise it made set them off and they came en masse through the fence, into her garden and the acre of lawn.
Thankfully, they broke into the fenced part of her place so they didn’t get out onto the two lane highway that was hilly, winding, and right there. The owners of the herd fixed the fence, said they were sorry, and all was well.
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@roseymare Ghostbusters? 
@ladybugsbw 
You didn’t let her partake, did you?
Think: Gremlins movie 
My thoughts exactly. 
@KBC Any mini worth his/her salt could send Satan whimpering in terror back to the bowels of Hades.
We who “own” them know the cuteness masks the Purest Evil.
We serve them here on Earth, hoping for a reprieve in the next life, where they undoubtedly rule.
How else can you explain my 16h Herd Boss allowing mini to enter his stall & share hay.
Before mini’s restricted diet, he’d also snarf down his ration of oats, then saunter in with horse & poke his nose in horse’s feedpan. His intent plainly: “You gonna finish that?”
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When I rented a local pasture we had hot air balloons. They launched from a nearby park and I was hoping one didn’t try to land in the pasture…barbed wire fences. He barely cleared the bench behind the pasture and landed in a parking lot up there. It oddly didn’t particularly bother the horses.
This pasture was also near the airport and one year the Blue Angels were here. The above ‘bench’ (or bluff) cut off the sound of their approach. They came screaming from the west…low and when 5 of them cleared that bench and sound went from 0 to 1000 decibels (maybe not that much but VERY loud). We (myself and horses) about lost our sh**. Quite startling. We had a whole 4 days of it (2 days of practice and 2 days of the air show).
Susan
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This talk of helicopters made me remember the air saw that came through a few years ago. Basically a helicopter with a string of circular saws dangling underneath, for cutting branches along the power line. That was interesting. Photo from the internet.
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No joke? You have really seen something like that? 
Actually I think they use something like that in rural Alabama to get rid of the privet, wisteria, kudzu and assorted trees growing on the power lines. I have heard about it out here but thankfully have not witnessed it first hand. My horses would probably lose their minds.
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