Okay, here's my FAVORITE Shetland Pony story. It was published in the local paper a few years ago. I laughed until I cried, literally. This man KNOWS what he's talking about!
SO YOU THINK YOU WANT TO PONY UP, HUH?
Mark Hinson, DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER
The other day, as I sat outside a restaurant along scenic, 60-lane Capital Circle Northeast in Tallahassee, I noticed a pony ride that'd been set up in a lonely, dusty, strip-mall parking lot across the highway. The ponies looked sullen and cranky.
"I hate ponies," my friend Austin said. "The only people who like ponies never had one."I'd never considered this, but he was absolutely correct.
Austin grew up next door to a now-defunct pony farm in patriotic, slightly psychotic Jackson County. As a child, he cleaned stalls to earn money to waste on video games.
Occasionally, he and some neighborhood kids would chase down ponies and ride them bareback without aid of bridles.
"We'd grab hold of their manes and ride them until they threw us off," Austin said. "It was fun, but the hard part was catching the mean little (expletive that rhymes with plastered). It took a group effort, like Neanderthals hunting a mammoth. You had to tag team them. There was an art to it."
One day, during a guerrilla-raid pony ride, the pygmy equines exacted revenge.
"There was this kid, Fuzzy, who grew up to be a convicted arsonist," Austin said as he eyeballed the pony ride.
"Fuzzy made the tactical error of getting in between two of the ponies we were holding. One of the ponies spotted Fuzzy out of the corner of his eye and kicked him hard. Then the other pony kicked him right back. They just kept kickin' him back and forth. It was like pony badminton. I watched for as long as I could, and then I had to turn away."
After hearing Austin's tale of the unfortunate future arsonist, I suddenly remembered that I once had a Shetland pony. It was a Christmas gift. Nonreturnable.
Despite my faulty, NutraSweet-soaked memory, I can still remember the names of all the dogs, snakes, turtles, tarantulas, cats, skinks and frogs that I've owned since I was in kindergarten, but I cannot recall that rump-biting pony's name. I've blocked it out. It's a horse with no name. Let's just refer to him as Evil Blowfish Beast, or EBB.
EBB was smart and mean, a bad combo. Assuming you could trick the pony with snacks and cram the bridle bit in his mouth without losing fingertips, when you were fastening the saddle on his back, EBB would extend his belly like a puffer fish.
Later, during the ride, he would suck in his tummy, thus causing the saddle to become loose and slide. He would pick up the trot as the saddle slowly began rotating from the top of the horse to the transmission. Saddle horns should come equipped with eject buttons.
Attempted decapitation was EBB's other speciality. The newly built shed that EBB called home had sharp, low-slung, tin edges. EBB's favorite bedtime story was "The Headless Horseman." The-mad-dash-to-the-shed-of-death move was especially terrifying when EBB was trotted out for rides during birthday parties.
"Everyone has been to that birthday party where a pony runs off with some yowling, terrified reveler," Austin said. "The poor kid is always traumatized. Then his mom has to come pick him up early from the party."
As we sat in the restaurant staring at the ponies, we watched as a young family challenged death, leap-frogging across the eight lanes of traffic, trying to get to the pony ride. After a few near-misses by speeding semis, the family arrived, panting and shaken, and paid for the pony ride.
"Now is when the dangerous part begins," Austin said.
Copyright (c) 2000 Tallahassee Democrat