RTW -- What Animal?

Road Trip Wednesday is a ‘Blog Carnival,’ where YA Highway's contributors post a weekly writing- or reading-related question that begs to be answered. In the comments, you can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic. We'd love for you to participate! Just answer the prompt on your own blog and leave a link - or, if you prefer, you can include your answer in the comments. 

  Next week’s topic:  If you could be any animal, which would it be, and why?  

My answer to this question varies depending on how I look at it. If I read it as which animal would I be, the answer is a horse. Like a lot of young girls, I was bitten by the horse bug. Unlike a lot of young girls, I never grew out of it. I was about nine, a friend of my father's offered to let me ride his old gelding, and the moment I was up on his back, I was hooked. It completely broad-sided my mom--who was and still is a huge horse person--because, as she likes to tell me, prior to that I was terrified of horses.

After that, though, I was hooked. I'd set up jump courses in the backyard and gallop over them, pretending to be a champion show jumper. In 2004, I fell in love with Smarty Jones and horse racing and decided, if I couldn't be a racehorse, then I'd become a jockey. 

I'd become a wild horse, not a Mustang because they aren't as free as they used to be, but something where I could gallop over miles of open land.

If I read the question as what animal would I choose to be, then the answer is a bird. Probably some kind of bird of prey, like an osprey, eagle, or hawk. I'd love to be able to fly, really fly.