horsing around

bonzo, originally uploaded by Joker the Lurcher.

dear readers, today's post concerns the equine member of our family. as regular readers will know, the magnificent bonzo resides with uncle gary. he has a lovely stable with a little round window high in the wall, and a huge field which he shares with some other hosses. a hoss could not be happpier. young dave and i help herself with stable duties. young dave is a dab hand at clearing a pile of manure in double quick time, and i sit and supervise from the comfort of the sawdust.

in the winter, the hosses go out in the field in the day and come into their stables at night. in the summer this arrangement is reversed in order to keep them away from the flies in the heat of the day and to prevent the magnificent bonzo's magnificent pink nose from burning in the sun. when the hosses come in in the morning they are usually very tired and lie down for a kip after breakfast. the reason for this tiredness has not been altogether clear, although mrs rose, who lives by the field, has heard thundering hooves in the night.

a couple of days ago the gardener at the big house called over to herself.

"your hoss has been attacking the trees!"

it appeared that the magnificent bonzo had been seen going at a eucalyptus tree in the field with more than a little energy. he had pounded at the cage that was supposed to protect it from harm with his hooves until it had given up the ghost and had then munched through the tree, leaving it more of a bush. there had been several witnesses, all of them amazed at the ferocity of the attack. herself was rather concerned about the effect of munching eucalyptus. in the antipodes there are little bears who live in trees and eat eucalyptus. they become drugged by its chemicals and fall out of the trees. i suppose we should be grateful that the magnificent bonzo ate the tree before climbing up into its branches - i suspect having a beast of his size fall out of a tree onto you might hurt.

the next day herself noticed that the magnificent pink nose was a little runny, and that one of the eyes was also a little damp. she concluded that it was unlikely to be remorse on the part of bonzo and decided that perhaps he had a little cold and had been attempting to treat himself with herbal remedies from the trees. when she saw the gardener she shared this theory with him.

"perhaps i'll bash him over the head with a tree to help with his headache," said the gardener, only half joking. it appeared that a second tree had falled foul of the magnificent bonzo's charms. this time it was a london plane. a brief search of the interweb brings up the following on plane trees:

"Legend has it that in ancient Athens there was a long avenue of Plane Trees that became a popular meeting place for Greek philosophers. They used to pace the long avenue amidst heated philosophical discussions, and so they appointed the Plane Tree the emblem of ‘genius’. Apparently the Plane tree offers a remedy to heal general ills, simply chew the bark straight off the Plane Tree. For a cold remedy, the bark should be boiled first."

it would appear that the magnificent bonzo is something of a genius. and his cold has completely gone...