Following Sparkles

Snow lovers around our area are finally happy. Arctic air has settled in for the long haul, and the Lake Michigan snow machine has been activated. We all knew it would happen... but none of us thought it would take until February! Mom's really happy she is mostly working from home, as much she dreads long drives in it.

This week also brought a way more fun first, our first wild donkey. At long last, behold:

We considered keeping her to be a companion for Toby, but since she's lazy and her metrics aren't so great (and since we'd already decided to keep so many equines in January), we decided against it. 

On a happier note, our Poitevin mare and Toby will be the proud parents of our first foal by this time next week! Fingers crossed that the mule will take more after its mother in terms of size.

The donkey wasn't the end of the January excitement: we also found two 900+ genetic stat mares before the end of the month.

First was Portia of the rainbow eucalyptus forest:

As much as I love duns, in this case the shading on her mane is kind of unfortunate: it makes her already thin neck look even thinner. XD

Her performance metrics were ok:

...but we were not big fans of the bottom half of her personality, so she didn't stick around either.

Second was Hard on the Rocks of the taiga bog:

We loved her coloring and markings, naturally...

...but we have enough slow, lazy horses as it is, ha ha, so she didn't stay either.

Last Sunday, all of our dark forest essence gathering finally paid off. We unlocked horsie sense! Whenever it's turned on and a wild horse is nearby, sparkles appear and point the way towards it. It works, alright, and we are absolutely loving it! 

We're finding so many wilds now - it's amazing how many are so close but not in view - and it's great not having to keep such a close eye out for wilds all the time. Horsie sense also keeps us from wasting our time riding up to deer and other things that sort of look like horses from a distance. So, yeah, it was definitely worth all that time blundering in and out of the fog!

Even with horsie sense, we have not found any noteworthy equines yet in February. That's perfectly alright, since we have the mule foal on the way and all, but it leaves this post feeling kind of incomplete. So, enjoy these fun screenshots of some other fun stuff that's happened lately.

We tried to dismount for a photo op with a sleeping panda, and this happened.

Pepsi's legs? XD 

At least they're not going through the horse like they do on Blitzen.

=)

Wow, that's green!

How?

Yeah... we'll pass.

Beef N Low