A horse died Tuesday in a bizarre accident in Harmony when it stepped on a cesspool cover with its hind legs and went down vertically into about 8 feet of water in the former well, with only its head above water.

Firefighters and community members with an excavator and backhoe tried to rescue the animal, but by the time they dug it out, it had died, according to Harmony fire Chief Onie Lougee.

“The animal was basically standing on its hind legs as if it were rearing up on its legs, ” Lougee said Wednesday.

He said he did not know the age of the horse, but its owner said he had owned it for 17 years.

The accident occurred when the owner, with the horse on a lead, stopped to talk to a neighbor. The horse stepped on the cover of the cesspool and went down into the former well, which is about 12 feet deep and used for gray water, according to Lougee. The horse’s owner also was leading another horse at the time, he said.

Lougee said when he arrived at the scene sometime after 4:30 p.m., he could not see the horse’s head, which was inside the well hole but above water.

“Unfortunately the animal passed before we could get it out; I believe due to the cold and shock and so forth,” Lougee said.

The Somerset Sheriff’s regional communications center in Skowhegan received the report and paged the Harmony Fire Department, which responded to Brown Road, according to Lougee. More than a dozen firefighters responded.

Lougee, who has been fire chief 37 years, said the horse’s owner felt badly about the animal, which later was buried in a field.

“It was an accident, unfortunately, all the way around,” he said. “They didn’t know the hole was there.”

Lougee acknowledged it was an unusual situation, though he recalled his department about 20 years ago rescued a moose from a bog.