Deja Vu... Again

Christmas is over. *Sighs.* It always comes and goes so quickly, doesn't it? Thanks to El Niño, it's been unusually warm all month long. My sisters were bummed there hasn't been accumulating snow to set the Christmasy mood, but I'm not complaining. I'm not crazy about snow, and Mom's so much less stressed out when she doesn't have to drive in it.

We've continued to hang out on HI2's snowy isles so that my sisters can get their snow fix. Earlier in December, Julie mentioned in her post that we had never found a 6/6 horse on snowy terrain or in the month of December. Well, that all changed thanks to me and the flute! (It actually happened way back on the 13th, but now that the busyness of Christmas is over I'm finally getting around to posting about it.)

Windy and Pepsi with the special pony

She's +86! Unfortunately, she's also the same breed, size, color, and gender as Dasani, Bethany's 6/6 +91 Exmoor. And not only that, but since Exmoors can't display white markings, they look absolutely identical.

Dasani just after Bethany caught her

Dasani now <3

With the two other pairs of 6/6 look alikes (Jess and Dash the white gray New Forest Pony mares, and Mistral and Murphy the gray Camargue stallions), they were at least different in height and markings! Therefore, I don't think 6/6 Exmoor #2 is going to be staying with us. That is, unless we can get Lily to see how entertaining it would be to have identical twins in the herd...

Bethany and Xanthos found another really nice mare the very next day on White Isle. This one is not a duplicate in any way. In fact, she's a Norwegian Coldblooded Trotter. I've wanted one of these since the breed was introduced...
If only she had 3 more stat points and wasn't so lazy and skittish! Then the decision to keep her would have been easy. But, I have a feeling my sisters are going to say I should choose between her and that Curly, and how can I pass up a horse with curls and spots?

Spotting a Curly

As my sisters know all too well, I have a weakness for livery stalking. I haven't found any irresistible horses in there for some time, but I still check on occasion anyway. Okay, maybe a little more often than "on occasion." I just can't help myself. 

On Wednesday night, there she was, a 6/6 +88 Curly mare, just waiting for us: 












This horse is indeed a super horse (a horse created by a player via a super horse token). For whatever reason, her creator promptly decided not to keep her and generously put her in the livery. After I'd added up those impressive stats, I clicked the adopt button at once. Curlies are cool no matter their color, but a black leopard one?! Wow, we really hit the jackpot! Felicity, being the appaloosa lover that she is, is thrilled, of course.

Here is the mare's avatar:

As you can see, her coat's base shade is an interesting sandy color, similar to the off-white look she has in her profile pic. 

No exciting snowy terrain wild captures to report, but it's not from lack of trying. There just don't seem to be many wild horses roaming the snowy isles, at least not when we are looking, and the flute has not given us any tempting horses either. We did, however, win our Pro Auctioner award this morning when we auctioned a Finnhorse stallion!

4 Cheers for the First 30!

PepsiSummer has now personally caught 30 6/6+ wild horses on Horse Isle 2! We keep a nice little spreadsheet with the horses' basic info (and also a huge, extensive spreadsheet of all our horses, but that's another story). Here it is:



And here are some things we noticed that we found interesting:

• White gray has shown up more times than any other color so far, on 3 equines.

• Even after that long streak of 6 mares in a row, the tally of mares and stallions is still nearly even: 14 stallions and 16 mares.

• The equine with the highest stat total is still Balderdash the New Forest Pony. 2nd place goes to her look-alike, Jessamine the NFP. 3rd goes to Vega the Furioso. Mare power!

• The equine with the highest stat total for its breed is also Balderdash with +110. 2nd goes to Vinca the Newfie with +104. 3rd goes to Della the Spotted Draft Horse with +98. The mares trump the stallions again!

• Harbor Isle is still the 6/6 wild hotspot for us. We've captured 6 there!

• We've captured at least one 6/6 wild on all of the terrain types except for snowy. Hmm, I guess it's time to visit those more often!

• We captured...
• 9 6/6 horses in 2013,
• 12 6/6 horses in 2014, and
• 9 6/6 horses so far in 2015

• We've still never captured a 6/6 horse in the month of December. Maybe this will be the year?

• There's no clear leader in the 6/6 wild capture count. 
• Bethany: 7
• Felicity: 7
• Me (Julie): 8
• Lily: 8

• Flora is one lucky mount for Lily. Lily's found 5 of her 8 6/6 wilds while riding her.

• Bethany has never caught a 6/6 wild while riding the same horse. 

• We've found 14 pony-height 6/6 wilds (less than 14.3 hands) and 16 horse-height 6/6 wilds (14.3 hands or greater). Wow, who'd have guessed it would turn out so close to even?

• The most common height for our 6/6 wilds has been 15.3 hands. We've found 5 of them with that height!

• The average height of our 6/6 wilds is 14.1 hands. (Ha ha, Pepsi the Shetland drags it down with his 8.3 hand height.)

And now for your viewing pleasure, here are head shots of the 30 wonderful equines!

#1: Pepsi (lives with CandyNutmeg)

#2: Kestrel

#3: Grade Draft Horse (sold)

#4: Zephyr

#5: Mistral

#6: Vinca

#7: Palladium

#8: Myrrh (sold)

#9: Brio

#10: Jessamine

#11: Xenon

#12: Umber

#13: Napoleon

#14: Balderdash

#15: Zesty

#16: Dasani

#17: Vaquero

#18: Xanadu

#19: Della

#20: Windy

#21: Anya

#22: Tang

#23: Vega

#24: Murphy

#25: POA (sold)

#26: Brushfire

#27: Galena

#28: Edoras

#29: Xia

#30: Oldenburg (name pending)

Out with a Bang

As you can probably tell from that title, November wasn't the total wash out that Julie predicted after all. We just had to wait patiently for the last day!

Guess what the flute brought Herbie and me today? 6/6 wild #30! Whoo hoo! And it's *another* mahogany bay mare! Wow, I think that flute really is made of mahogany!

She was hiding in her screenshot because she is as antisocial as they come, so here is a better shot:

And for comparison's sake, here is the first 6/6 mahogany bay mare the flute gave us:

Vega the Furioso

Oh, Horse Isle 2, we will never cease to be amused by your happy little coincidences!

This mahogany mare is our first Oldenburg. A noble pose, I've always thought, and I love that snip!

Thanks again for the flute, Poseidon! Now that we have our November horse, bring on December!

November Doldrums

Yikes, here it is November 21st, and this is our first November post. We haven't been on HI2 all that much this month, and when we have, we haven't had much worth writing about happen.

The weather here has been interesting, though. Two windstorms a week apart, and now we are getting our first snow of the year here! So far, the snow is nicely sticking to the grass, trees, and roofs but not sticking to the roads. If only snow always did that!

But enough about the weather. Going back to the Horse Isle 2 topic, we have finally determined who's keeping each of our new horses and given them names and tack. Here they are:

Lily's liver chestnut AQH mare from September, Zaffre
Zaffre is a deep blue pigment. It's pronounced "zaff-er."

Bethany's white grey Andalusian stallion, Edoras
In the Lord of the Rings series, Edoras is the capital of Rohan,
a kingdom renowned for its fine horses and horsemen.

Bethany's golden chestnut Grade Draft mare from September, Eureka
I think it's safe to say that she is the biggest hunk of gold we will ever find in the mountains!

Lily's silver dapple brown tobiano Manga stallion, Halcyon
The halycon is a mythical bird that is said to have the power to calm wind and waves.
It's also used as an adjective that means tranquil or happy, which is perfect for a breed that always looks like it's smiling!

Felicity's dun snowflake Nez Perce stallion, Orion
Felicity named him after her favorite constellation, Orion the hunter,
because his white spots remind her of stars.

My palomino sabino Racking Horse mare, Xia
Xia was a Chinese dynasty and is pronounced "ShYah."
It may also mean "glow of sunrise" in Chinese, or possibly "welcoming" in Greek.
(I'm not sure how much stock to put into baby name websites...)
At any rate, it sounds pretty!

These beauties will all be added to that ever-lengthening Horse Isle 2 Herd page soon. We're thinking it may be time to move them all over to our individual pages, as many as there are now, but that's going to be a huge job...

Obviously, we haven't found any horses we just can't say no to this month, and it's already about 3/4 over. I guess that is a good thing. We kept 4 from October, after all! (Edoras, Orion, and Hal had to stay, and then Xia evened back out the mare:stallion ratio so nicely...) 

Landslide and I did find 3 cool-looking horses on Line Isle last weekend, though. The first one we fluted.

Her stats were unimpressive, but she was so pretty that I decided our Millennium Fields needed her. Champagnes are so cool!

Then on our way back to the dock (we had logged in from the far end of Line), we found two more:

A black Sicilian

Aw, good timing with this screenshot. XD

And another dun Nez stallion!

What a coincidence! I'm so glad for Felicity's sake that the 5/6 one, Orion, has spots! <3