August 7, 2009 ~ Around 1830 Littleton Firefighters were called to a property on East Orchard Road for an animal rescue.  First arriving Squrt 12 found a fall horse in a creek bed, trapped by a large tree.  Large animal vets were already on scene and providing care, but the tree was too large to move by hand.  Additional crews were ordered to the scene for exterication.  A portion of the tree was cut, cribbing & airbags were deployed and the winch from Brush 18 was used to pull the tree off the horse.  Once freed, the horse tried several attempts at standing on her own but none were successful due to injuries and fatigue.  A crane was oredered to lift the horse out of the creek and onto a pasture, crews removed two sections of fence for access.  The crane moved into place and veterinatrians administered a sedative and hooked up a lift harness.  With some careful coordination the horse was quickly lifted out of the water and placed safelty on the ground; a 4 1/2 hour long rescue from start to finnish.  A thourough medical evaluation was completed and blankets were used to dry and warm the hypothermic horse.  Sadly, a short time later the horse was euthanized despite the great rescue effort by everyone involved.  A full gallery of rescue photos by Eric Hurst can be found here.