For centuries April Fool’s Day has been celebrated throughout the world as a day for people to play pranks and tell jokes. The actual origin story  varies depending on the source, but its tradition lives on in modern culture.

Locally, in the the town of Hammonton, the White Horse statue in front of now-closed storefront of White Horse Farms has fallen victim to this holiday almost every year.

Some recall that this horse has been painted as a zebra, with rainbow colors, and even dressed in different clothes, suffers years of torment at the hands of pranksters.

This year, however, the horse appears to have been vandalized in a way that no one in the town of Hammonton was expecting: it went missing.

Perhaps torment isn’t even the word to describe what happened. Left at the post of where it stood is are four broken legs. As if the horse was ripped of the post from the cement, the vandals had no mercy.

Reaction has consistently been one of surprise.

HHS teacher Stacy Gerst couldn’t believe it.

“Are you serious? So you’re telling me when I drive past that post there won’t be a horse there?” she asked.

Yep. That’s right.

So is this too far? Did that horse endure harmless pranks or should this vandalism be stopped for the sake of the owner and also the history behind it? Do these pranks add on to the history or be a stain on how it should be remembered.

After every time the horse was painted or dressed, the owner fixed it and made it new again. Now there is no horse to fix and this horse may be found in a ditch or in the woods in a condition that might not be reversible. Or maybe it will just magically reappear.

Time will tell.