Law enforcement agencies are using any method humanly possible to protect Jimmy Carter and company at the Habitat for Humanity event this week.
They’ve even resorted to methods that aren’t human.
Five horses, ridden by members of the all-volunteer Calhoun County Sheriff’s Posse, are patrolling the streets of Wellborn Manor this week, where nearly 2,800 workers are building 35 houses for the Jimmy Carter Work Project.
The horses join untold numbers of uniformed and undercover officers, deputies and agents from the Anniston and Oxford police departments, the Calhoun County Sheriff’s office, the Alabama Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Secret Service.
Pounding hammers raise a constant din, and circular saws scream through lumber over the sounds of shouting voices. Golf carts, four-wheelers and trucks buzz along streets choked with people walking between houses.
The horses remain calm through the chaos.
“It’s all in the animal, the training,” said Jim Donovan, a posse member riding the salt-and-pepper-coated Icicupi. The Sioux name means “one who gives of himself,” Donovan said.
Icicupi is 4 years old, young to be doing the work required this week, and Donovan is proud the horse is keeping his cool.
“Stand, stand, stand … stand,” Donovan tells Icicupi as a large truck growls by, loaded with trash. It passes within a few yards of Donovan and Icicupi.
“Good boy,” Donovan tells the horse as the truck rolls away.
Habitat volunteer Diana Moore was impressed. Moore, who raises horses in Spring Hill, Fla., was surprised to see the animals so calm as trucks trundled past and tools set forth their cacophony.
“These guys here are practically bomb-proof,” Moore said. She teased her friend Judy Haughton, a volunteer from San Francisco, about being afraid of horses.
But Haughton said the deputies’ horses don’t intimidate her. She remembered volunteering nine years ago in Los Angeles’ Watts neighborhood when a shooting happened a few blocks away.
“I feel real safe with these horses on the perimeter,” Haughton said.
