Brindle Appendix

No, I'm not talking about that little organ by your intestines or a reference section at the end of a book. Those aren't striped, as a general rule. XD I'm talking about this mare, a striking brindle sorrel sabino Appendix Quarter Horse.

Lucky Strike used to belong to our HI2 pal PintoMustang, but Pinto decided to give her up to make room for new horses. (As a non-sub, her horse slots are quite limited.) Pinto asked if I'd be interested in having her, either to ride or to retire to our Millennium Fields. I believe she said Lucky is the 3rd Appendix QH on the game... unless I'm remembering wrong, which is entirely possible. I had a dream last night where I awoke to find Asian Lady Beetles crawling over me, my bed, and my room. Those icky dream lady beetles may have addled my brain a bit.

Asian Lady Beetles. Not nearly as pretty as ladybugs.

Mom has a minor infestation of these beetles in her bedroom. On sunny days (sometimes even in the dead of winter), they wake up and crawl out of cracks in her sun-damaged wooden windowsill. They then proceed to crawl and fly around, mostly by (but not limited to) the window area or by her bedroom lights if the sun is down. If she doesn't get rid of them in a timely fashion, they eventually die in inconvenient places - like on the carpet, stuck to the sides of the furniture, and sometimes even on her stuffed animals. Yuck! I may sound callous, but I don't have much compassion for bugs that sneak inside. They can live outside to their hearts' content, but they do not belong in my house! As far as bugs go, I suppose it could be a lot worse than ladybug impersonators. However, they can bite and also can emit nasty-smelling yellow liquid when disturbed, which makes catching them and releasing them outside quite unappealing. Mom usually just sucks them up with the vacuum, and I don't blame her.

I guess I was thinking about the lady beetles because my birthday's coming up on Monday, and I will sleep over in Mom's room, as is tradition. I am going to insist she vacuums before I will sleep there.  

Wasn't this a happy tangent?

Anyway, I fell in love with Lucky Strike. I hoped against hope that I would be able to snatch her up from the Humane Society before anyone else did. Pinto and I coordinated it so that I was there in the livery the second she hit the surrender button. Lo and behold, this time it worked. (I have not had such good luck with this in the past...) 

Lucky Strike is a fine name, but it didn't fit with our self-imposed naming rules: they must be one word, and no two horses of the same gender may have names starting with the same letter of the alphabet. Since we already have a mare that starts with the letter L, Lysithea, Lucky wasn't going to fly. Lucky's new name is Skyrocket. She's a flame red color, her stripes remind me of smoke trails left behind by rockets, and she has sky blue eyes. I will call her Sky for short.

Sky's avatar has much larger white patches than I was expecting!

Once that mission was accomplished, Pinto and I went wild hunting! I rode Skyrocket throughout, of course. It was not the most productive wild hunt ever, but it sure wasn't from lack of trying. We traveled all over the place. First we visited the Tiger Isles and found nothing. Then we headed to the Decay Isles and also found nothing - not even on Lost Isle, which is a challenge to get to. We did okay getting through the Lost haunted house because I had mapped out the most direct route. Unfortunately, Pinto ran out of energy once we were there, so we had to go back through the haunted house again to get off of Lost. My map wasn't much help at all for that. I was wandering around in there way longer than Pinto. XD

On our way to the Lost Isle haunted house...

We travelled to the Marshy Isles next and found one lonely Connemara. 

Its avatar reminds me of Ophelia's. :)

After that, we travelled to Deep Jungle Isle to get to Oak, only to discover that one needs a key to get into the cave that leads to Oak. We both had forgotten this rather crucial detail. Poor Pinto patiently waited while I went to scope out Oak. No wilds to be found anyway. 

Twin Rivers appeared to be deserted, so we got all ready to go there next after a stop in Narrowed to sell off items. When we had travelled as far as bustling Prairie Isle, I noticed on the map that two players had already beat us to Twin Rivers. We scrapped our Twin Rivers plan and headed to the Leaf Isles. 

First stop: Stem Isle. I lassoed 2 wilds there while Pinto was away from her computer for a few minutes. Here they are: 

3/6 brown leopard POA stallion

4/6 buckskin Welsh Mountain Pony stallion

Finally, we made the trek out to the 3 little islands off Stem Isle, 2 of which can only be reached through reefs. No ponies to be found on either Sprout or Seedling, but 2 were waiting for us on the farthest one, Bud Isle. :)

Those underwater helmets are so fashionable.

Bud Isle Wild #1. I didn't get a screenshot before Pinto caught her. Oops.

Bud Isle Wild #2, a liver chestnut sabino Grade Pony.
He did not want to stand still for his screenshot. 

By then, I was ready to call it a night, happy that we'd ended on a high note. =)

Oh, and a quick follow-up on the wilds we were on the fence about in our last post: 

• Julie has decided to keep the American Cream Draft. She has named her Melancholy because of the mare's pessimistic personality. 
• I retired the Argentine Polo Pony to our Millennium Fields. His avatar was similar enough to Skyrocket's that I decided we could do without him taking up a slot.
• The lazy Camargue stallion is still in limbo, probably wishing he was retired like the Polo Pony.