Look up "prank" in the old-fashioned dictionary that is actually a book with pages that turn, and it says, "mischievous trick or practical joke."

So seriously, what two rural kids did 10 days ago cannot even be classified as a prank.

But in the sleepy little town where I live, where curfew is 10 p.m., seven nights a week for kids 18 and under; where the siren still blows at noon and 10 p.m., and where the police routinely unlock car doors and check on elderly who live alone, grown-ups at both the school and the town took issue with two seniors who graduate today riding their horses to the high school.

Seriously? Isn't this Wyoming, where we ride for the brand and do things by the code of the west? Isn't this where Chris LeDoux sang about cowboys you can't see from the highway and livestock outnumbering people?

Come on.

Of course, there are liability issues and insurance issues and no one wants to hit a horse or be smooshed by one. Heaven knows, I don't even want to ride one ever again. But we are Cowboys, all of us, with a capital "C."

So these two, a girl who took credit for the idea, and a guy she found to join her, drove from their rural residences several miles from town pulling the horses in a horse trailer, parked the horse trailer in town, mounted up and rode east to school. And even though the school has a parking lot big enough for a rodeo, they were told they couldn't park them there.

So they took them off school property, and tried to tie them at the edge of the city-owned walking and bike path. And then somebody from the city said they couldn't park them there either.

OK, it's been 35 years about to the day since I was in high school, but one would perhaps be grateful that seniors even considered going to school that day in May. It's May, people.

Not for one minute would I begin to infer that these kids are not as sophisticated as their larger-school counterparts. The school has a reputation for excelling at everything from sports and music to culinary arts and drama.

But this is the same school where the darling dog was trespassed during football season, because I was new and didn't know it was against the rules to have a 12-pound pitifully adorable puppy on school property, even though he was leashed but being held at the time.

So they have rules, and it's a good thing I'm too old to go there. I am not a school administrator, nor am I in city government or law enforcement, but it would seem that anything that doesn't endanger someone else or irreparably damage property would be moderately acceptable.

Now, if you're one of those 3-year-old dancers in the parade right after the horses, you might think you're irreparably damaged, but really, hot water and good soap usually does the trick.

The day after the horse-capade, I awoke to an unusually loud rumbling and discovered some late night-worthy comedian had driven a gigantic yellow piece of construction equipment to school. It was parked in the parking lot and dozens of kids, mostly guys, were milling around.

'Course if it was a Caterpillar or a Deere, that could be considered an animal, so that's probably against the rules too.

Community News editor Sally Ann Shurmur can be reached at (307) 266-0520 or sallyann.shurmur@trib.com. Read Sal's blog at tribtown.trib.com/Sal/blog