Purple Polka Dotted Horse?
© Marta Towne
MULBERRIES, yes, you read that right, MULBERRIES! We have a Mulberry tree in our pasture and my mare LOVES the darn things! As a consequence, she spends about 3 months of the year purple polka dotted!
Now, this mare, Reena, is not your normal, run-of-the-mill, eat-them-off-the-ground-and-be-happy horse. Oh no! She could not be that normal. No, this silly filly actually stands up with her front hooves on the tree so she can reach the branch then lips those berries she can reach off the stem and eats them.
When the berries are no longer reachable, she stands up there, grabs the branch and shakes it until the berries drop off. The only problem doing it this way is that by the time she gets down to the ground to eat the fallen fruit, the other horses she shares her pasture with have beaten her too them!
So Reena, being the intelligent Arabian she is, discovered a new way...one that keeps her closer to the ground, and thus her rewards. She backs up to the tree and kicks it! Yep, both hind feet hitting the tree! Not real hard, just hard enought to make some of her "forbidden fruit" fall! Then she drops her head and eats everything in a three foot radious! Of course the others have eaten the rest, but hey, too much fruit can upset your stomache, even if you do eat like a horse!
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