No Egrets

@elodieunderglass horf

Spicy!

Soccer players are the horses of sports. They run around in fields for hours on end. They stub their toe and they die. They fall and they die. They run into each other and

My friend had a dream that nintendo dropped FE4 remake out of nowhere and the localized names for Quan and Leif were John and Jared and we kept saying "john fire emblem on his fuckass horse"

@elodieunderglass - This made me think of you.

Thank you so much for this

where in the HELL did that horse come from

• Annabell, a solid white and completely deaf pit bull that used to let mom draw on her belly
  
• The World’s Ugliest Tom Cat, who turned out to be the cuddiest teddy bear of an animal
• Cocker spaniel named “Captain”
• Stupid, the Cat
• Litter of baby raccoons
• Three more cats
• A completely bald and extremely anxious canary that sang beautifully, but only at 4 AM
• Baby Squirrel that grew up in the house and then refused to move out
• A Genuine Thoroughbred Racehorse who was a spectacular athelete but had a habit of running races in the wrong direction.  Benny turned out to be a terrific trail horse instead.
• Turtle
• Snapping Turtle
• A bucket full of 43 goldfish left over from the fair.  Mom counted once they were all in the bathtub in the backyard with the snapping turtle.
• Another cocker spaniel named “Major”, who had the tremendous talent of eating green beans silently
• Red-tailed hawk he found on the highway, and sucessfully nursed back to health and released.
• Dummy, Son of Stupid
• Strange, the dog that lived under the porch and only came into the house at night.
• An “abandoned” baby deer.
• Spooky, an alleged dog.  
• Joey the parakeet whose tricks were 
  1. drinking tea out of a tiny cup
  2. threatening to peck out people’s eyes
  3. wearing hats
• A Really Big Toad he found behind the factory, because the other auto workers were discussing using it for target practice.  Mr. Grumpity was guardian of the rosebed for several years and granny’s (his mother) favorite animal he ever brought home.
• Gretchen, a St. Bernard that had to be shaved from her prior owner’s neglect, and spent a week hiding from sight with such success in the house that they thought she’d run away.
• Arson, Burglary and Murder, three frankly adorable little kittens.  They did not change the names, much to the regret of the cop who lived three doors down.
• Yet another Cocker Spaniel, named “Colonel”
• Cardinal (bird)
• Canada Goose (Demon)
• Once in the nursing home, he had a “pet” 12-point whitetail buck that would come to his window to be fed corn and get headskritches, inexplicably named “Florence”

The marriage only ended because thier time on earth did. He never kept an animal Grandma wouldn’t allow and if anything she was worse about it.

She was the one who brought home a tarantula.

Questions from the Notes:

Your grandparents were Druids, right?
They were a Steel Worker and Head Clerk at the local grocery store, respectively. 

How does a Horse run races the Wrong way?
Get near the finish line then make a U-turn becuase he wasn’t done running yet.  He was also an excellent jumper and swimming horse. Much happier being a trail horse on Cleveland’s Emerald Belt.

How does a St. Bernard hide in a small suburban house?
Clever use of the space behind the couches, under the sink and under beds.  For a 110lb animal, Gretchen was also very quiet and knew to wait until the house was empty to move from hiding spaces or to snitch food off the counters.  Once her coat grew back in she was willing to be visible again.

The Tarantula Didn’t come froma  pet store, did it?
You know that stereotype about Tarantuals hiding in Bananas? That used to be a real thing that happened when bananas started being regularly available in Postwar mass market grocery stores.  Not very often, but it did. Grandma found the tarantula in a shipment of Bananas, and being the only non-arachnophobe working in the store, took her home and named her “Carmen Tarantula” after the famous brazilian singer. Geography was not Grandma’s strong point

Carmen Tarantula lived for 3 years and juding by the extremely blurry polaroid in the family albums, was probably a Brazilian Black.

What do you mean Spooky was an “Alleged Dog”?
Well, for one thing, she Meowed.

Spooky was a 35lb delicate-limbed dog with owl-like pale green eyes and bat-like ears that was solid black save for a white patch on her chest in exactly the shape of Casper The friendly ghost, which was the only part of her visible when she would roam the halls at night, which is how she got the name.

Spooky was living in the house at the same time as Dummy, Son Of Stupid and another more Prototypical cat named Needles.  Dummy would sometimes forget what he was doing and get lost in the house, causing him to mewl pathetically until one of the humans or animals found and escorted him back to more familiar settings.  Typically, Needles would meow back at Dummy until she found him.

After three weeks in the house, Spooky could do an astonishingly good Cat’s Meow as well.

Spooky could also open doorknobs, get into the attic which didn’t even have a human entrance, would sit up like a human to eat her dinner or watch TV, and had a peculiar penchant for fishing.  Grandpa and Uncle popeye would regularly take her on fishing trips becuase she’d gleefully dive into the lakes and finish bringing the catch in, whether it were lake trout or pike or in one case, a strugeon.

Spooky also LOVED tomatoes.  More than anything else in the world.  If given a choice between a ribeye and a tomato, Spooky would chose the tomato every time.  This only applied to raw tomatoes though, she despised ketchup.

So while very much shaped like one, Spooky gave the distinct impression of something else dressed up as a dog.  Whatever she was, she was a loving and beloved companion to the family for 16 years.

If you enjoyed this story, you can check out my #Family Lore tag on my blog, or you can pre-order copies of the Family Lore Book containing many more stories on my Patreon. 
I am disabled and telling stories online is my primary source of income so if you share these please link back and consider donating to my Ko-Fi or PayPal.  Thank you all for your support!

DEFINITELY go read the tag. The stories are incredible! I would straight up read an entire book of them. Repeatedly.

And if you’ve got a buck to spare, drop it in that tip jar.

Appreciate your taletellers, folks. 😊

I’ve only seen this post in screenshots. My day has been made.

i, too, have only seen this post in screenshots….. and the lore about spooky has me thinking: “what if it was a spirit of the fae (or something of the like) who came and chilled with your grandparents bc they took in all the injured, unwanted, supposedly unlovable animals…?”

I’ve known Gallus was an amazing storyteller with a remarkable family for years, but this is the first time I’ve suspected an ancestral connection to Gerald Durrell.

Yet another epic. :)

I wondered why this was getting notes lol.

Some More animals from my mother’s childhood home:

• Nickel and Dime, the bait fish that lived in a teapot
• Susan, the rat snake
• Susan 2 or “Twosan”, also a rat snake but may have also been the same rat snake but bigger.
• The cats Smoke and Fire, so named because:
  1. They were gray and orange, respectively
  2. Fire was blind and navigated the house by following Smoke around, so literally, wherever there was Smoke, there’s Fire.
• A Goldfinch that moved into the Canary’s cage after he passed away and it was put outside one day during housecleaning
• A flying squirrel
• After my Grandparents moved to a nursing home, Grandpa had a “pet deer” that was a wild whitetail buck who would come up to the window of their room for carrots and head skritches, despire everyone telling Grandpa NO!!
• The Woodcock That Lived Under The Oak Tree. several attempts were made to name it but the next time it came up in conversation, everyone forgot what they had agreed to call it, so it became The Woodcock That Lives Under The Oak Tree.
• Romaine, a frog they found in a head of lettuce
• A Cow, briefly
• Apparently Strange The Dog had puppies at some point and they managed to find homes for Weird, Odd, and Bizarre, but they decided to keep Queer, which was a real funny animal to stand in the street calling in for dinner.
• At least 17 Bullfrogs, all named “Dog”
• Skittles the Pony who had a penchant for swimming in the local lake and biting pieces out anyone who wasn’t paying enough attention.

Honorable Mention:

• The first Dog my mom got was “Cops” a beautiful 120lb purebred German Shepherd who had flunked out of the police K9 academy.
• Cops HAD been doing very well at Bite Training, except that being A Creature of Profound Intellect and Sound Philosophy, Cops had assumed that the purpose of biting was to get the guy who was shouting and behaving aggressively to stop.
  So the first time he was told to Chase Down A Fleeing Suspect (the guy in the bite suit, sprinting away) Cops correctly decided that the man screaming at him to bite someone who was actively leaving the confrontation must be the aggressor, and promptly bit his handler in the dick.
• Being that he was entirely too morally upstanding for police work, Cops was surrendered to the local animal shelter as my mother arrived to adopt a dog.
• She expressed an interest, was told why he washed out and “He’s got a mean streak a mile wide- A little lady like you wouldn’t be able to control him.”
• My mother, 4'11 and the former Ohio State Weight Lifting Champion, looked down at this gentle soul and promptly scooped him up into her arms on his back like an infant, where he was thrilled to remain, tail wagging, for the rest of the adoption process.
• Cops was my mother’s loyal guardian, and largely aloof to politely hostile to nearly every man my mother brought home, which tended to end romantic relationships. Until one night when she brought a former ESL teacher turned computer programmer she’d been seeing home for a drink and when she came back from the kitchen with the bottle of wine, Cops had climbed into the man’s lap on the couch and rolled on his back while the man goo-goo’d over him like an infant.
• “That’s when I knew it was serious.” She told me, much later. “I hadn’t made up my mind about marriage at that point, but I knew I wanted children, and that I wanted him to be your father.”

—

I still make my living telling stories on the internet, so if you want to support my Ko-fi or Patreon, I’d be very grateful.

armor for man and horse presumably made for baron pankraz vont freyberg (1508-1565) by wolfgang grosschedel

2,300-Year-Old Horse Headdress from Siberia: this elaborate headgear was designed to be worn by a horse, and it depicts a rooster perched atop the head of a ram

This headdress was crafted from leather and gold foil, and it dates back to 350-300 BCE. It was discovered in the frozen barrows of Pazyryk, Siberia, where unique conditions allowed the organic material to remain almost perfectly preserved for more than two millennia.

According to this publication:

The headdress is sewn from felt and leather, and topped with a ram’s head with a cock-like bird standing between its horns. The bird is detachable, its legs are made of whittled sticks, and its wings were made separately on a rod frame. The peak of the mask is decorated with seven fish made of gold foil.

Many other horse masks and headdresses have been found at Pazyryk:

Some were peaked and open at the front, while others were closed and entirely covered the horse’s face. All had side flaps tied under the chin with small straps, and ear cases that allowed the mask to sit more securely on the head. They had felt bases covered in leather and were horned.

Together with their mane covers and tail cases, these masks appeared to transform the horses into fantastic mythical creatures resembling the horned griffins depicted on Pazyryk chieftains’ tattoos and plaques from Peter the Great’s Siberian Collection.

Above: another horse headdress from Pazyryk, c.450 BCE

All of these headdresses were made by ancient Altaic nomads, who formed part of the larger group of cultures that are collectively referred to as the Scythians or Scytho-Siberian peoples.

Above: horse mask/headdress with antlers, harness, and bridle, from Pazyryk, c.350 BCE

Each costume was found on or near a horse's body, but researchers believe that the costumes were created and used for ceremonial purposes throughout the horse's life, as this article explains:

It is clear the costumes were not made specifically for the burial: all horse costumes, even the most elaborate, were well-worn and in some places mended, indicating regular use. Because these costumes are impractical for everyday use, they probably were reserved for ceremonial use – and due to their being well-worn, such use was common. As with contemporary Mongolian pastoralists, perhaps these costumes were reserved for the Pazyryk’s seasonal changes of camp, or perhaps for other alternate or additional ceremonies significant to the community.

Above: a full ceremonial costume from Pazyryk, c.400-300 BCE

Several other artifacts from Pazyryk have previously been featured on my blog, including an elaborate horse headdress equipped with antlers, an ancient saddle blanket, and a 2,300-year-old plush bird.

Sources & More Info:

• Scythians: Warriors of Ancient Siberia: Horse Headgear
• World Archaeology: Do the Clothes Make the Horse? Roles, Statuses, and Identities in the Pazyryk World
• Hermitage Museum: Horse Headdresses 2, 3, and 4
• University of Washington: Artifacts from Southern Siberia/Pazyryk
• Perspectives and Studies in Ethnozooarchaeology: Killing (Constructed) Horses: Interspecies Elders, Empathy, Emotion, and the Pazyryk Horse Sacrifices
• University of Leicester: At Home, with the Good Horses (PDF) (this is a really great paper)
• British Museum: Introducing the Scythians

just overheard a mum in the museum ask her seven-year-old child ‘shall we say bye-bye to the skull?’

A few months ago I had to bring this beauty home from London:

This is Junie, a gilded horse skull on a 2m tall frame, with a rotting bridle and discordant rumbler bells plaited into her mane. When she moves, she makes a horrendous jangling and chattering noise, and when she's still the smell of decaying leather and river mud radiates off her.

I was sweaty, pissed off, I had been mudlarking so I stank as well, and I was generally not presenting a very warm or welcoming figure as we sat in the first-class lounge and I was acutely aware that the giant horse puppet wasn't the most sociable thing either. And then, a mother and daughter came in - The mother looked exhausted, but the daughter, maybe ten at the oldest, was properly on the verge of a meltdown... Until she saw Junie.

Immediately, she was calm. She came over, very quietly, and asked "Can I look after your horse?" - I looked at her Mam, and the Mam shrugged and nodded. I handed Junie's reins to the girl. What followed was about an hour of the girl in deep conversation with Junie, as if she was a real horse, bringing her cups of water, stroking her nose, checking that her bridle wasn't too tight, walking her around the lounge, and whispering in her empty ossicles. By time I went for my train, she was eating biscuits and happily waved Junie off with a "BYE HORSIE! GET HOME SAFELY!"

Kids LOVE skulls.

After a few asks of "Is Junie a Mari Lwyd?" I feel like I need to protect the good name of the Welsh, because Mari Lwyd is a beautiful, powerful mare, and carries with her an incredible Welsh-language folk tradition which has been a big part of how Welsh culture has kept the Welsh language sacred and alive despite constant persecution by English speakers. It feels like it's really rude and cruel to Welsh people to act as if Mari Lwyd is just any old mast-beast (the collective name for the various head-on-a-pole animals mostly found in the East Atlantic Archipelago) rather than a specific Christmas tradition that happens to include the very famous horse skull animal.

(And, as someone who plays in other horse skull traditions that are NOT Mari Lwyd, I feel like it is my responsibility to make that clear - Which I have apparently not being doing as well as I hoped! - because I don't want to continue the trend of either a) Treating Wales as Magical Ye Olde Wizardland or b) Taking Welsh stuff and saying "Close enough, it's English now")

Junie is more closely related to Poor Old Horse, the Yorkshire manifestation of a mostly English tradition of the old horse as a character in mummers' plays, where the horse has reached the end of his days and is slaughtered and brought back to life (And depending on the telling this is either "And he stood up from under the pole axe, miraculously restored to youth" or it's "And after the axe struck home, and the saddler had his hide, and the hounds had his flesh, and the scrap man had his shoes, and the upholsterer had his hair, and the cutler had his bones, the man who held the bridle took the whip to his soul and said 'Get up Dobbin, your job's not done...") - It's definitely a tradition that survives because it draws the parallel between the worn-out old workhorse and the way that the bosses treat the human worker (I must admit, my favourite version of the song is the one where after "Get up Dobbin, your job's not done!" The rider sits astride Dobbin's soul, and Dobbin rides him straight to hell). Traditionally, Old Horse's skull is painted black or red: This below is the Old Horse of Hootton Pagnell, the first photo collected in 1976 by Ruairidh Greig, and the second from a Bonhams catalogue in 2015 when the horse was sold into private hands:

From Mr Greig's own website:

"Mrs Ward-Norbury  confirmed the story that she outlined in her letter. The skull was retrieved by her family from the pond where it had been dumped by the band of mummers, who had been regular annual visitors but who broke up after a final performance in the village. She was told this by her Grandmother, who died in 1931.

The performance was most probably of the Old Horse play, in which a comic horse goes lame and is treated by a blacksmith and a farrier, a local version of which was described in 1903 (Wilson, 1903). I discovered a near complete version of the play a few miles away at Elsecar. This can be seen, together with further details about the custom, in my online thesis (Greig, 1989)."

Junie herself is gold for two reasons, 1) Because I wanted her to look like a catacomb-saint or a holy relic 2) Because I enjoy gilding things.

She also has a couple of siblings: The Old Tup who comes with a full set of organs, and two more horse skulls (December and Dobbin) Because apparently I now run some kind of Dead Horse Sanctuary and people keep finding old horse skulls and giving them to me. They're all beloved and live in a herd in my living room where they have plentiful access to brandy, fire, human souls, and space to perform their natural behaviours.

Peace and love on planet horse ❤️

Thank you @laughingfate ! It’s a lovely story!