So What's the Big Deal

(Another of Diego's letters home from Camp)

Sunday November 11 2007

So you know how I like to go to the Hair Spa, right? Well, I figured out how I can go there every day! Every night I go and get into the saltbush or the tumbleweeds. Saltbush is made of spiny branches, and grows well in our sandy rocky desert here. The deer and antelope and rabbits like to eat saltbush, and I tried it too. It doesn't taste bad, if you can eat it without poking your mouth with the thorns. Humans can eat the seeds and the leaves, if they want to go to that much trouble. The tumbleweeds are pretty thorny too. Sometimes it kinda hurts, rubbing my neck in the stuff, trying to break off those branches in my mane , but the pain is worth the pleasure because then I get to go to the Hair Spa. M has to spend some time getting the thorny branches out and combing out the tangles from my mane and spray foofy stuff on it, making it silky smooth and good smelling again.

Then it's time for more games: The other day M put my halter on and we started walking toward... this LUMP on the ground that wasn't there before! EEEK! It was scary and I didn't want to walk toward it, and when M started walking toward it, I hid behind her and crept forward with very tiny steps. All the other horses also saw this big LUMP, and they all crowded up to look - standing behind ME, mind you, they all wanted ME to be the brave one to get closer. Why me?! I'm just the baby! It was just toooooo scary to go any closer, but then there went Jose nosing up to check it out, and there went Mac, poking it around, and well if they could do it, so could I, and I did, and it was nothing! Just my bonnet, which M picked up and pounded me with and put over my ears, and then a saddle, so M threw that on me. She tightened the designer belt so I was wearing the saddle all by myself for the first time, and M was so proud of me she started giving me Smoochies. It's just a saddle like everybody else wears, I don't know what the big deal is, but I graciously accepted the Smoochies nonetheless, and I stood there and looked cute. (I'm really good at that.)

Then I REALLY looked cute today when M put a necklace on me. It was made of 2 milk jugs and an orange juice jug (which smelled really good). She said it was the first horse necklace she's ever made, and she made it specially for me! Now I know what I want to be for Halloween next year. The Milkman! I can pretend like I'm delivering milk and orange juice to people's houses while I'm really going to collect bags of carrots and apples (and, of course, I can carry my own bag!). The necklace makes cool noises when the jugs bang together in the wind, or when I move my head or walk, and when M bounces them off my butt. Rhett and Finneas were looking at me with big wide eyes, like they were jealous of my necklace, or like they were scared of it. I don't know what the big deal was, but I know I looked cute!