The first time someone allegedly snuck onto Brent Tarr’s Gloucester farm and snipped hair from his miniature horses was last year.
Then it happened again in September. The animals at the family farm were targeted for a third time in the past few weeks.
Tarr, 64, wants it to stop. This week, he decided to speak out about the hairy crime, so other farmers are aware of the trend and to make sure that it doesn’t continue.
“I didn’t expect them to come back a second time. And definitely didn’t expect it a third time,” said Tarr, who added that everyone knows him by the name “Ringo.”
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“I’m just hoping for one thing: they stop doing it,” he added. “And that we catch them and see what their motive was.”
The strange crime, which involves someone apparently using shears to haphazardly cut away the thick hair from the manes and tails of Tarr’s miniature horses, may sound random. But similar incidents have been reported across the country, with some police officials claiming the hair is used to make fancy jewelry or as extensions for show horses.
Tarr’s miniature horses — he has four of them — range in age from 6 to 26. Only three of them were targeted. He keeps them on a five-acre farm on Essex Avenue, in Gloucester. The small horses are family pets, he said, and share space with some goats.
Tarr at first thought it was a Halloween prank, or that maybe the hair was being used for a costume. But when it occurred twice more, he was slightly befuddled, because his theory had been quashed.
“I got to thinking maybe it’s for jewelry, or for some kind of profit. I just don’t know,” he said. “It’s very common out West.”
According to NBC 24, a television news outlet in Michigan, thieves recently used scissors to remove hair from the tails of two horses at a farm in Ida. The station reported that similar horse-hair related offenses have occurred in Wyoming, Colorado, Illinois, and Missouri.
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After the most recent incident in Gloucester, Tarr said, he got the police involved. He also plans to install some cameras in the area in an attempt to catch the perpetrator.
Tarr said the animals don’t appear to have been injured, but by removing the hair it puts the animals at a disadvantage. Horses typically use their tails as flyswatters, swishing them back and forth to scare away pesky bugs.
“They have no way to shoo them off, and get them off of them, so they just land on them and bite away at them,” he said.
Plus, the jagged new haircuts are highly noticeable.
“Normally, the tails almost touch the ground,” he said. They don’t now, he said, and “their hair doesn’t grow back fast.”
Steve Annear can be reached at steve.annear@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @steveannear.