I Bought a Pony at Home Depot

She's a little thin, this pony I bought at Home Depot while I was in town today.  Fortunately I also brought home plenty of beet pulp and senior feed. 

I found her in the middle of the aisle in front of the power tools.  She was part of a Halloween display, but was actually remarkably close to anatomically accurate for a plastic skeleton.  At a pretty reasonable price, and as the only model equine in the store, I decided it was worth the splurge to bring her home to use for teaching purposes.  I have a human skeleton that is just the right size to ride her, so now I can teach comparable anatomy more easily.  My plan is to get a large cupboard and put it in the tack room as a home for all my skeletons.  I also have a female human pelvis, a bovine pelvis, a bovine femur, various antelope vertebrae, and an antelope skull.  Once they are all together in the tack room I'll be able to honestly say I have skeletons in my closet.

We initially went to Home Depot for materials for fencing repairs around the ranch.  As we were leaving the store Jasi and I loaded the skeleton into the back seat of my truck.  Several men paused and did a double-take to stare at us.  I have to think that either my new hairstyle is dramatically eye-catching, or it's not every day you see a horse skeleton being loaded into the cab of a pickup.  At any rate, the three guys put down their purchases (they were also patrons at the store), and they proceeded to load up all my lumber in the bed of the truck!  I went to get a plastic red flag for the end of the 2x4s, but another guy (also a shopper) had already beat me to it, grabbed plastic, and then fastened it to the boards for me.  I thanked everyone for their help, and Jasi I pulled out of the parking lot feeling like the world revolved around us! 

Once we got home I took the skeleton out of the truck.  It really and truly upset Mahzi the dog.  She growled at it, hackles up, and barked continually at it until I took it in the house.  Even once it had disappeared into the garage she wouldn't take her eyes off the garage door in case it reappeared.  Finally Jasi convinced her to come back to the barn for dinner.  We'll see what Mahzi thinks about it once it's living in the barn all the time. 

Last on the day's agenda was cleaning up after the new kittens.  Orzo is the only one that we can hold so far, so I made her into a kitty burrito (I have to catch her in her dog crate with a towel because she's like piece of popcorn ricocheting around the interior, all claws and teeth).  Once she's safely ensconced in a towel she will let us hold and pet her.  The cutest kitty burrito on the place. 

 
Linguine climbs the walls and dangles from the top of the cage while growling and spitting when I go to change water or Jasi goes to feed her, and Gnocchi attacks if we make eye contact.  They need a little more time to settle in before we'll reach this stage with them.