The Tenacious Unicorn Ranch: How to Build a Haven, Part 1: The Siege

James starts off a four part series on the Tenacious Unicorn Ranch, a trans haven in Colorado which came under attack in 2021.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everyone, it's James. I just wanted to explain why
you're only going to hear my voice in the first episode,
but you're going to hear Garrison in the other episodes
as well. And that's because I went into Natius Unicorn
Ranch twice, once during the period that we're going to
call the siege, and once again in the summer. And
so the part that only I experienced only I'm going
to talk about. We felt that was the most honest

(00:20):
way to do it. I hope you enjoy it. I
have worked on this for a very long time. Hard
scrabbled pass in southern Colorado in the winter. It's not
where you'd expect to start a story that's fundamentally about
the Internet, but it's where a four wheel slid a
rental car in the spring of If you remember, back then,

(00:40):
Biden had just been inaugurated, some chads had stormed the capitol,
and vaccines were gradually being administered across the country. Less remarkably,
frontier rail lines are taken forever to find my damn bag,
and I was trying to get there before dark about
a week before it's in a tweet, I thought that
this is a Nature's Unicorn Ranch because I grew up
as a farm who didn't really slide quite as easily

(01:02):
as others did into the supermatcho stuff, and I certainly
didn't slide anywhere near conservative politics. What the ranches were
doing building a queer haven and anarchistyle pack of farming
co op inspired me. I've been missing country life a
lot during the pandemic, and they wanted to get out
onto the ranch. But that wasn't really why I was
driving an appropriate, rittle car through a white out. I

(01:25):
was doing that because I've seen this tweet, and that
tweet said there ranches under attack and they needed help.
The tenacious Unicorn Ranches under attack by local biggots and militia.
They have threatened violence publicly to us and those that
help or associate with us. They have encroached on our property,
armed at night, with the intent to harm those of

(01:45):
us that live here. We need help. That's where the
story starts for me. It's where the story starts for
a few characters you're going to hear this week, but
it's not where the story really starts. It starts with
Penelope log we'll call Penny, working at a big box
store dealing with increasing transphobia both online and in person
in the early Trump era. Penny's a veteran and a

(02:07):
country girl, and she was looking to get out of
the city along with her partner's Canton Gin. She decided
to rent some land and set up Founding Rescued Our Packers.
So we started in Livermore, Colorado, which is on the
whole entire other side of the state. UM, And it
really was a reaction to what was happening to the

(02:28):
queer community, UM, not only locally, but kind of what
we were seeing nationally. Went about two years into the
Trump presidency where things were just getting really bleak and
dire for the majority of people that we hung out with. UM.
We we were originally going to try to like just
make a make a bus that was roadworthy and we

(02:51):
could live in and just kind of be nomadic, but
we couldn't really on board and help other people that way.
Like that was really just like it would have been
hard to have the cats we had. Yeah, we also
like even at that point we had like four cats,
so it was two three cats whatever at the time,
but still too many umbo young dogs and whatever. So
so we uh so I had always wanted to do

(03:13):
a homestead, and I grew up farming and ranching, so
it was very natural for me. Um, And so we
found a ramp that we could rent and livermore Um
and knee cat and gen Um just uh kind of
set out to start somewhere. So that was a haven
for queer people, um, but also a home for us.

(03:35):
You know. It turned out the United States didn't something
given alt pack of crisis. The animals were once extremely fashionable,
and herds popped up over the West in the nineteen eighties.
Now that generation about pacer ranches are aging out of
the hard physical labor that makes about every day on
a ranch, and there are packers are often left to
their own devices. The unicorns, as the people in the

(03:56):
valley called them, adopt these al packers, which are often
to elected, and care for them. They re feed them
slowly so they would't die from the blow that comes
from refeeding too fast, and they sell their fiber as yah. Gradually,
with a ton of hard work and a growing community,
they built their ranch into a sustainable operation. But as

(04:17):
the herd grew and their unfortunate rental agreement became clearer,
they decided they needed a different ranch, and so they
moved across the state to Westcliffe and it was a
rented ranch that we were trying to rent their own.
We thought we were renting their own actually um, and
then that rug got pulled out from underneath us, like

(04:39):
they just they just when we went to purchase it,
they were just like, no, you haven't been renting, going,
you've just been renting. And we were in an additional
hundred thousand dollars, So it was like, yeah, we had
to move right as COVID was getting bad in America.
So like March of that was fun. It was it

(05:00):
was the worst and best move all at the same time,
because the roads were fucking empty, like if quarantine was
in full effects, so the roads were empty. So we
were traveling with trailers full of animals on empty roads.
And then after like the restrictions lightened and we got
used to what like the normal traffic flow was, we
were like fuck this, like but it was cool, like

(05:21):
having everything shut down. We couldn't like the big problem
was we couldn't rent anything because every rental place had
shut down, and so the really it was like the
beginnings of like the community for for us right. It
was like we taped friends and you know, comrades to
how social media. Yeah, and everybody really stepped up and
helped with that move. So it was it was cool

(05:44):
West Casts where I met them. It's a beautiful town
in the sound grade to Christo's. In the summer, it's
full of tourists taking weekend trip to the mountains and
eating ice cream. And in the winter it's quiet, snow covered,
beautiful and absolutely freezing. In March, I drove through the
town in the afternoon and what I figured was an

(06:04):
inconspicuous man. Everyone else who visited the ranch that month
and picked up a tail. Aside from a few strange looks,
I think I got through, okay. I took a long,
lonely winding road through the valley and then turned down
a dirt road towards the ranch. Penny met me at
the gate in a plate carrier with a rifle. We
briefly hugged, and then I quickly parked my car outside.

(06:26):
That don't that the grown queer community at the ranch
called home. It was a profoundly strange experience. Inside the
house was full of warmth, conversation and laughter, people enjoying
each other's company and enjoying being out of the biting
wind and snow. Outside was cold. We wore plate carriers,
and the ranches carried long guns. I carried a camera

(06:47):
and go pro and a kniffac and then dressed in
battle rattle. We broke the eyes on the art pack
of drinking tanks and tried to stop the recently adopted
animals from re feeding too quickly. I walked and talk
with Penny and j another of the unicorns, whose story
will get you later, about the stress that the increasing
threats to them had had on them. But first we

(07:11):
met the animals. We have sheeps, we have goats, We
have of course alpaca. We have ducks and chickens um
day to day, five Pyrenees which are life stock guardian dogs,
and a couple of blue heelers rescues um and my

(07:34):
dog Starbuck, and oh yeah, eight cats. Um, But the
vast vast majority are the alpacas. It might sound a delic,
and in many ways it is a dilic, But the
work on the ranch never stops, and sick al packet
need tending to almost constantly, even during the seats, which

(07:56):
we will get too soon, I promise there was a
lot of volunteers could help with, but animal husbandry wasn't
on the list. So even after long night's patrolling their ranch,
cold and afraid, Penny and j often had to take
it in terns looking after old animals with blow let's.
They labored to breathe. Here's one that I recorded, m
can you set that down? Help me stand her up,

(08:18):
because we're just gonna see if we can give her
to walk, all right, if you'll run it, okay, I yeah,
there you are there, you are there, you go. My

(08:41):
felts are perfect. Good. Next up, they can set it
in there. Gotta walk, baby, that's part of this. I
know that's part of this through Okay, okay, okay, oh baby,
I can't do that. It's all right, laugh it's sorry. Well,

(09:09):
if you're not gonna walk, my love, I gotta do this.
I know it hurts. Yeah, okay, let's get you crush. Yeah,
it's okay. There, that's Cooper sounded like there was a

(09:41):
little bit more movement. Yeah. I'm getting the feeling that
they probably didn't even start asking for help until the
we guess thought they heard was actually dying in the
old field. The story about how we got from a
thriving and happy ran community built on the anarchist principle
of mutual aid and solidarity to what the Unicorns called
the seat. If the story it's about lies, bigger tree,

(10:03):
and the Internet, but it's hard to think about those
things too much of the ranch, because in the two
trips I've taken I felt nothing but incredible sense of love, solidarity,
and supportive community. If you've engage with the story of
the ranch at all, perhaps following Tenation's Unicorn Ranch online,
it's probably because of the siege. But I don't want

(10:23):
this to be storied. It's just about guns, bigger tree,
and community defense. I also wanted to be a story
about how long before the stiege began, the community at
the Sana's Unicorn Ranch realized that nobody was coming to
save them, and so they decided to save themselves. They

(10:46):
were they want to kill us, and they yeah, but
when we like call it out, you know, um, I, hey,
stop killing us, not even like fuck of just hey, like,
did you just like lay off the whole killing us thing?

(11:08):
You fucking fun half like fucking unsympathetic victim screaming trainings forgot?
All right? So no, the anther, no, you can't stop killing. Excellent,
Maybe time to get guns now. The day I slip
slid my way across hard scrabbled past in my not

(11:30):
so trusty nous and our mirror with the same day
that the gunman walked into a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado
and killed ten people with an a R pistol. My
social media feed was filled with the sadly all two
common reactions to these, all two common mass murders that
happen in this country. But the next day I saw
people flooding gun shops in the fear that the state

(11:51):
would begin enforcing to gun control laws. It didn't. As
I edit this draft, another young man with another gun
has walked into a gay bar in Colorado Springs, about
an hour from the ranch. It's an intensely conservative city.
The host focus on the family. You'll know by now
that the club queue shooting result in the death of
five people, including two trans people, and in your twenty

(12:13):
one more, I'll be honest with you, it felt a
bit weird driving through Colorado to write a story about
guns was broadly positive, and in a sense it still
does today. But the reason this story about guns is positive,
really has very little to do with guns and everything
to do with people. It's really a surly about solidarity
what it is about a R fifteen, But some people

(12:35):
will never get part of the A R fifteen enough
to see that. In case you missed it or you
caught one of the reports at the time that seemed
to skim over the fact that the ranch is around.
We should give an account of the siege up top
here so you understand what happened. Understanding why it happened,
that's another episode. So for now, just to understand. It's
some boomer's log in to their social media and the

(12:56):
queer elimination rhetoric we've reported so much about overlap with
their small community in a valley in the Soengreade to
Cristo Mountains, and this was a result. Things started, as
they often do these days, online, with a throwaway comment
about a parade in town. The girls didn't really know
that they had moved into the reddest county in Colorado
at the time. Lauren Bobot was that congress person. But

(13:19):
soon they started to get an idea of what some people,
pretty small minority of people as it turned down, thought
about them. So It started on Facebook, like honestly, like
we started seeing more comments and people getting weird about it,
and then there was literally to this day, I will
still say it was a fascist fucking parade. You're talking
about July, they had a fascism, Like the local fascist

(13:44):
did a fascism And we observed this by accident because
we were like, oh, parade, that doesn't sound interesting, but
we did go into town to get some coffee and
ran smack into a fascist parade and and fascist and
what what sort of like so fascist in the most
like like direct way that there was Christian nationalist flags,

(14:08):
three percent flags, Confederate flags carried by armed white people
screaming about the government and the Libs and the queers.
Like it was a they did a fashion there's that
one guy with a shirt that says I know things
and own guns or something like that and shooting and
shoot things yeah, um and so like it was a

(14:30):
overtly hard right sponsored parade that was supposed to be
like hard like that, like it was like set up
as a protest because of the COVID restrictions. They weren't
letting people have a parade, and this was their answer
to that. Um, and so really all we did was

(14:51):
call that out on Twitter. We're like, wow, Like, there's
a fashist parade in West Clifton. We'll come back to
this parade next episode. It's organized by a local newspaper,
which is, to be perfectly frank the most batchit, crazy,
boom and brain worm thing I've ever seen in print.
It was an open carry event where malicious from across
the US come to open carry unloaded guns for reasons

(15:13):
that we can't really pin down. Soon. The unicorns calling
out the parade on Twitter set keyboard fingers clicking. I've
said fingers here, but these people give off a distinct
single finger typing vibe if I'm honest. We started. The
first thing that we noticed was the tails. We started
getting tailed from points that everybody that we were very

(15:39):
public about frequenting, like Peregrine Coffee and Chappie's. We started
getting picking up tails from those points routinely. Um, and
that so like people like following you, yeah, yeah, not
very covertely in the same three vehicles. And they wouldn't
just follow us anyone that they figured out knew us. Yes,

(16:02):
anybody that announced on any social media platform that they
were coming to see us. They would then follow and
then it really got it became super into the physical
world when nine News, well nine News did a piece
on us in which the Sheriff's department came up because
they were mass reporting us for animal abuse. A lot

(16:24):
of the harassment came from a website you're probably familiar
with now, but maybe you wouldn't have been back then.
It might have been farms and locals. You don't have
to say their names, yeah, if we could blank out.
But it's one of those things where like sis, people
don't even know that Kwie Farms exists, and more people
need to fucking now because it's it's it's ridiculous harass.

(16:46):
We've done a couple of episodes. I don't want to
give them attention, but like I don't know, I don't
know whatever you think is best. Yeah, it's an entire
forum dedicated to harassing Frans people that get any sort
of popularity, ruining their lives as best they can with
his stay did goal of making trans people kill themselves.
And it's there's a lot of members like like like
like notable turfs are part of it, like like like

(17:07):
everyone has found this website now and people need to
know it at least existed, and it's a truly awful
cesspool of They spent all of their time obsessing over that.
It seems like it's worth naming them, but please save
yourself the time and don't click over there. It's nothing good.
Soon things got more real. A local news report who

(17:34):
covered the rude you've got apostle with a white powder
in it. That powder wasn't deadly, but it was a
real threat. Soon that threat came to the ranch, the
nine news reporter. Thing happened, and then we started getting
like warnings from people that were monitoring chat rooms, Like
they were like, oh, hey, like the chatter about y'all

(17:56):
has skyrocketed, and like it is blatant, like people making
plans to burn your home down and kill you, like,
and locals started warning us that like, hey, this has
happened before you got to get ready. This is real.
Don't have pea, like, don't be predensiti about this, Like
we're being serious, And so me and Jay started for

(18:17):
about two weeks, we were walking patrols around the perimeter.
The unicorns are afraid, so they took steps to defend themselves.
Lots of the people that they ranch, like Jen and
Cat you can hear anything interview, didn't want to carry guns.
Penny and j had some military experience and they knew
how to use and carry guns. So every night they

(18:39):
set out walking the perimeter to what for intruders on
their property line patrols. They realized that there were people
out there at the night looking back at them. That
night is when me and Jay came back from that
and put out a very whole heartfelt cry on Twitter,
like we don't know what the funk to do. We're
terrified and any help would be amazing. They were armed

(19:04):
at this point, but they weren't ready for a gunfight.
That's a very different thing. Sadly, though, the gunfight they
weren't ready for wasn't going to wait until they were
yeah armed, um rudimentally armed by the way, like Jay
had a hunting rifle, no a shotgun at that point,
Um and I had my springfield a r U and

(19:25):
so we scared them off. But like that made it
like clear and present for us, and so we put
a heartfelt call out onto Twitter. Um and although was
up here like the next day and caught people on
the property that night, like it was armed people on
the property, multiple people. Altho arrived the next day, spread

(19:45):
on by that same tweet I'd seen. This isn't his voice,
but they are his words. We wouldn't say too much
about him other than that he has significant experience with
this kind of thing, and he spent his own time
and money to drive across the west to help some
queer folks he'd never met. He just wanted to raise
our package, and he left the funk alone. I saw
a post on Twitter from someone else boosting the original

(20:08):
Tenacious Unicorn ranch plea for help. I reached out to them,
and after some back and forth and letting them vet me,
we agreed I would drive down to help them out.
I took a little time to do some map studies
of the area and confirm some suspicions about local law enforcement.
The sheriff at the time had publicly spoken at and
supported oath Keepers rallies as a keynote speaker, alongside Stewart Rhodes,

(20:28):
as well as other prominent oath keepers and three per centers.
The cops haven't ever been much of an option in
keeping marginals people safe, but this was on a whole
other level. I called some people to tell them I
was heading to its nacous unicorn ranch for accountability's sake.
At the time, I was binging an unhealthy amount of
letter Kenny, And when one of them asked me why
I was driving six to seven hours to help total strangers,
the first thing I thought was when a friend asked

(20:50):
for help, you help them all. They gave us his
account of what happens. Again, for everyone's safety, were not
going to use his voice. But that night he patrolled
the mentor, often nearly being run off the road on
the way to the rug. He said, at first, when
he saw at a tweet, he thought Penny and j
were of reacting. But after that tale, and after what
happened that night, he knew something very strange was going on.

(21:12):
So on arrival at the hard Pack road off the highway,
there were two cars on the other side of the
highway from the intersection, backed in with their headlights off.
There's an old Durango and a truck that I couldn't
make the model of on the other side of that Durango.
Once I turned down the road, probably two yards after turning,
I looked back and saw one of them turn on
their headlights and started gaining on me until they were tailgating.

(21:33):
I started to slow and pull over to see if
they would pass, and they slowed and stuck with me.
I had a suspicion about the two cars initially, and
this was confirmation. I can't really see how fast we
started going, but I know it was significant enough that
I was starting to oversteer and lose traction on the
back end of my car on turns. I knew Penny
and the rest were waiting at the property gate, so
I signaled Penny to say, hey, I got a tail

(21:54):
keep the gate locked. You'll see me driving by. Tell
me what vehicle is following me. The vehicle slowed down
we approached the gate, so it appeared they may have
been anticipating me to do the same. Once I passed
the gate, they continued to follow. It turns out it
was the Drangle, which I later found out had been
doing drive byes of the property of the past couple
of days. The Draga quickly realized what all those doing

(22:14):
and pursued him pasture rog further down that snowy do it.
Right after I passed the ranch, I accelerated a little
more to create some distance and drove to a spot
that I had seen on the map on the way
down that looked like I could effectively turn around without
extra maneuvering. As I turned around, they had closed the
gap and started to slow. Once they were pulling up
next to me, I turned my high loom and carry
light on them to at least disorient or over stimulate

(22:36):
them with bright white light and try to catch faces.
The windows had a dark tent, so it was not feasible.
My other goal was trying to convey I see you
and I have the advantage without actually visually threatening them.
The driver had been rolling their window down until I
put that light in the window, then immediately stopped and
rolled it back up. At that point, it was apparently
enough to make them decide it wasn't worth it and

(22:58):
take off. I legally carry a side arm with me
the majority of the time and had it on me.
I had my hand on it, but didn't feel the
need to draw during that encounter. In the two minutes
since he turned off the hard top, does ideas about
what he was in for had pivoted almost as fast
as his car did not put out earlier on while
driving to the ranch from my house. I had the thought,
you know, this is probably bullshit and a bit of

(23:19):
an overreaction on their part, So maybe at least I
can deescalate some of their anxiety and give them some rest.
This will probably just be a lot of nothing. Clearly,
I was mistaken, and after that encounter my mind was
very much re oriented to the present reality. Driving through
the gate, I had to prepare myself to the new
possibility of actual exigency, and I thought, oh shit, there's

(23:40):
something to this well petter pattern. Motherfucker's I'll just send
a message to Penny saying that he was free of
his tail, and she opened up the gate quickly. He
drove up the same dirt road I did a few
days later to the dome. We had a scared and
sleep deprived unicorns were hiding from the cold and from
the same people who had just tailed him down a
dirt road. Once I the house, we made introductions, and

(24:01):
I explained that a trusted source had boosted their call
for help, and I was willing to drive over to
see what, if anything I could do to offer them
in the form of assistance. They gave me situational awareness
of the property who lived there, et cetera. Then went
over what had been happening up until my arrival. The
local harassment people following them and doing drive bys of
their property, the Kiwi farms threats of quote burning them

(24:24):
out of their home. They had also mentioned there was
a probing incident a couple of nights before that had
really set them off when they caught another unknown individual
probing their fence on the southern side of the ranch.
They detailed how they hadn't slept for almost forty eight
hours since that incident, which had prompted their call for help.
I could tell they were just done mentally, emotionally, physically,
but still keeping it together. So I said something to

(24:46):
the effect of you've done a great job, go get
some rest. I'll stay up and take the watch. That
was around nine pm. The crew went to get some
deserved rest, and I got ready to go out. Before
stepping back outside, I had to ask myself what the
actual funk is going on? I walked outside, grabbed my
rifle and plates, put on some extra layers of warm clothes,

(25:06):
and got ready for what turned out to be a
long night. Quickly as Unicorn slept, Aoud got to work
making a plan to keep the property and the people
they're safe. Having never been on the property, I went
ahead and to the best of my ability in the dark,
started estimating distances high low ground, points of opportunity, weakness, cover, concealment, hazards,

(25:30):
and any other unclear backdrops. But the other residences that
I had needed to be aware of that all came
into play later. Based off what I found my best guesses,
I started working at patrol on foot, covering the areas
I thought were vulnerable and most likely for incursion. The
roadside seemed like the most likely point of opportunity for
them since there was no barbed wire and a single
low wire fence being the only barrier to entry on

(25:52):
the property. Pretty quickly things got weight. At around I
heard the first vehicle pass by. There was decent moonlight
at the time time and I could see that it
matched the shape and size of the Durango. They were
driving by with their lights off, slow rolling and had
made a stop about halfway down the property line on
the roadway. They repeated this multiple times, so this kind
of confirmed my theory they would go for the easiest

(26:13):
point of access off the roadway. The drive by has
continued sporadically, and twice from high point on property, I
watched them turn their headlights back on, heading towards the
highway and stop on the hard pack, where another vehicle
could be seen sitting with its headlights on. Although is
pretty experience of this scenario, so it's Pool another of
the defenders who came a few days later. And it's
not my first radio with these things either, But that

(26:36):
doesn't mean it wasn't scary for all of us, but
especially for Ald, who arrived first and was patrolling a
small farm he'd never seen, facing attacks from an unknown
number of armed assailants. I can't remember how many times
I wish I had my m v g's with me
for better situational awareness, but they have been sent off
for repairs, so I relied heavily on the moonlight, which
there was a decent amount of not ideal doing a

(26:56):
foot patrol on your own and the dark with an
unknown number of people. Multiple times I thought I should
get one of them up. There's way more ground than
I can safely cover. I don't know the terrain well enough,
and doing this alone is fucking dumb if this turns bad,
But of course I ignored that intuition and told myself, Okay,
I'm overthinking this right now. These dudes are just trying
to funk with the queers, and this is purely intimidation.

(27:19):
I'm just gonna keep working the vulnerable areas, watch them
play their dumb, bullshit games, and let the Tenacious Unicorn
Ranch folks rest. Besides, at the time, I didn't know
the Tenacious Unicorn Ranch folks before that night. While they
did great with what they had available to them, I
had no idea how they would respond and a ship
hit the fan situation, what their personal capabilities were, if
they could be relied on for team movements, and didn't

(27:41):
want to risk relying on someone running on fumes, so
I said, fuck it, it'll be fine. His fears, as
it turned out, were more than justified. A little before midnight,
cloud cover came in while I was walking along the
west fence line and saw what I assumed was a
dim flashlight or a cell phone light flash about halfway
along the north fence line by the road, and I
fifty to twenty seconds later another flash, making me think

(28:02):
that they were moving west towards the ranch gate. It
was the first time I noticed anyone on foot, so
I started slowly working my way down quietly to see
if I could get closer for a good visual on
who it was walking the roadway. Since the moonlight went away,
I stopped about forty or so yards from the gate
and squatted download or reduced my profile and just watch.
After about ten minutes, I heard quiet voices and then
a very distinct earl from the man that appeared and

(28:25):
turned to call out after he activated the gate's motion
sensing light. I remember I had to stop myself from
laughing from them not only having such shitty discipline, but
also about what was a perfectly comical chud name. I
stood up and watched another dude come out of the
dark into the light of the ranch gate, who very
much had the build of an earl. The first guy
began lifting and pulling at the gate lock and chain

(28:45):
while earl was trying to cover the most and sensing light.
They stood at the gate and I could hear them
whispering for about a minute before I got annoyed at
just how dumb they were and how they didn't notice
me creeping closer to them while they were doing all this. Finally,
from around fifteen yards. I went to had and lit
up the two males on my flashlight, who both had
their faces covered in no visible weapons and a fairly
sarcastic voice. I said something to the effect of, Hey,

(29:08):
what are you idiots doing? Stop playing with the gate.
Go away it would I didn't really feel I had
much recourse other than to give a verbal warning at
that point, because they were still technically not on the
branch property and they had not made any visible attempts
to trespass or do any property damage. Both of them
ran off in the most awkward, non athletic way you
could think of. I didn't see anyone else in the area,

(29:30):
so I approached the road to watch them jump into
a car and drive off. I kind of laughed at
myself and remember saying out loud, cut, you guys are
impressively stupid. Okay, they're probing the property. Now I realized
these guys weren't working at a higher operational capability. I
also felt a little more comfortable that even though I
didn't have my n VGs to work in the dark environment,
they didn't either. After staying out for another thirty minutes

(29:53):
to make sure they were taking a break, I went
back inside to warm up for a few minutes, get
some food, and change my socks. After its scene, they
had maybe gone and re convened after they got caught
trying to tamper with the gate. I turned off the
lights inside the house that were visible from the road
so I wouldn't be visible, and also just to see
if that might make someone tempted to believe that the
nation's unicorn ranch folks had turned in for the night.

(30:13):
Things were quired for the next hour or so. While
out walking close to the east fence line towards the road,
I remember a fox letting out a scream from less
than a hundred feet away from me that honestly was
more startlingly all the other events in the night up
until then. If you haven't heard of fox screaming, it
does indeed sound like someone being murdered in the most
brutal way possible. I had a fox, probably the same fox,
a few nights later on the ranch. Even in the

(30:35):
midst of the siege, it was still a working ranch,
and so as a word of protecting people from violence
the ranches, and they're pretty in mountain dogs also had
to make sure they were protecting the chickens from Foxes. Sadly,
though Foxes weren't the only visitess that night. A few
hours later, a much more serious threat emerged. The night
continued to be quiet for the next while, and I

(30:56):
decided to move along the east side of the property line.
The cloud cover broke around two fifteen and I could
see some movement and hear low voices again. I got
low in held my position since it was fairly safe.
It could make out two figures walking towards me inside
the property boundary. I waited until they were about thirty
or so yards away, and I was pretty sure there
were no others working flanks before using my rifle light
to begin the process of p I d and figuring

(31:18):
out if they were armed. As soon as I saw them,
I noticed they were both armed, one with an A
R with no optics and the other with an M
one A with optics on it. I realized that while
I had the high ground, I was not comfortable with
the backdrops due to the house across the road potentially
being in line with my firing position, and started shifting
to a safer spot in case the confrontation escalated into
an engagement. I called out my first command while moving

(31:39):
to a better position to their left side, you are
trespassing on private property. Slowly, placed your weapons on the
ground and show me your hands. Do it now. The
two men frozen place but did not comply, and I
recognized in that moment that these were two different men
than who I had seen earlier. I called out again,
drop your weapons or I will fire on you. Do

(31:59):
it now. As soon as I finished that sentence, they
both looked at each other with their rifles and low
ready turned to the right and ran. I pursued them
so that I wouldn't lose the advantage I had, and
to make sure there was no way they can make
it up hill towards the house or get into a
more advantageous firing position if they decided to turn on me.
While parallel to them, so I could keep on the
uphill side, I called out, stop and place your weapons

(32:21):
on the ground. Realizing there might be others out there
watching my light move, I turned it off so I
wasn't such an obvious target and made short bursts of
the two men fleeings that I could maintain a visual
on them. It wasn't an ideal way to handle it,
but This was all an incredibly unideal situation to begin with.
After sustaining a fast paced run over uneven terrain and
somehow not falling on my face, I realized we were

(32:41):
moving toward the fence line and quickly looked around with
my light to make sure no one else was waiting
for them and also armed. At that point, I turned
my light back on them, and they both pivoted directly
to the fence, since we were still some distance from
the gate, where it appeared they were heading toward. The
first one with the m one a pushed the fence
down and hopped over. The second one panicked and with
both hands tossed his a r across the small ditch

(33:02):
on the other side of the fence, and I watched
it fly halfway across the road while he struggled over
the fence. He scurried over and kicked his rifle across
the road before picking it up and disappeared with the
other mail into the small ravine on the other side.
I realized I was disadvantaged where I was located, and
repositioned to a small rocky mountain nearby so that I
can at least get prone and have some cover if
they decided to fire on me. I laid there and

(33:23):
recovered my breath for a minute or so, watching to
see if anyone else was out there, and then moved
toward the house to make sure there weren't other incursions
I may have missed while occupied with the other two
who disappeared after trying and failing for a second time.
It seems that the local biggots took a break for
the evening, but out in the unicorns couldn't. That was
it for the rest of the night. I did go
back down and find their entry point, where the fence

(33:44):
had been newly damaged and bent inward, and tracks leading
over the patchy snow from the roadway. Then I walked
back to their egrest point, where the fence had been
bent outward. Everything that occurred that night was clearly a
hostile incursion, and they demonstrated intent to harm others on
their own property. The only reason that didn't happen is
because we were armed and prepared. I think they realized
at that point that the ranch was not a soft target,

(34:06):
and the occupants these men painted as weak were in
fact hard people willing to protect themselves and stand up
against their aggression. More importantly, the residents of the Tenacious
Unicorn ranch just wanted to be left the funk alone.
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website

(34:29):
cool zone media dot com, or check us out on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could
Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone media dot com
slash sources. Thanks for listening.