Sensing "Teat-fingers," Pony Chomps Thumb

About a year or so ago, Andretta and I were leaving Panera Bread after having eaten lunch. As we returned to the parking lot, I bent down to pet a guy's black lab puppy. This puppy responded by sucking on my fingers, which led Andretta to observe, "dude—he thinks your fingers are teats". Thus the unfortunate nickname "Teat-fingers Meltzer" was born.

Yesterday, I went to Palatka to celebrate Jake and Kinya's move to New York. My parents had arranged a family party at their house, and we had a good number of people attend from both sides of the family. We ate pizza, salad, veggies, and cake. It was the kind of party you write a nice blog entry about in which you extoll the many virtues of said brother, his girlfriend, and your parents. Until, that is, the animals come out.

My folks live in a rural-ish area on a full acre of land. Their neighbors to the right have a large spread which includes goats. Their neighbors to the left have two big dogs, two horses, and—though it pains me to say it—two ponies. After lunch, we took my cousins' kids, four girls between 4 and 8, to feed apples to the horses and ponies. I'd fed the horses before, and, since my mother hadn't come over to oversee operations, I launched into the "how to feed animals" speech. When offering food, you have to lay your hand flat, fingers together, and curl the food up towards the animal's mouth. Ostensibly, this technique protects your hand and helps the animal to distinguish what "is" food and what "isn't." So, after handing out apple quarters, we all got down to the business of feeding. Most of the kids were clustered around the horses but my brother and I were stationed at the ponies. Turns out, the ponies tend to fight over food, and I suspect one of them doesn't like apple skins. I tried to feed the tan pony an apple quarter, but she persisted in eating the non-skin part without taking the whole piece. Frustrated, the black pony tried to steal apple piece only to chop down on my thumb and pull.

Okay, so when you have four little girls and two huge strange dogs crowded together in a small area, it's not a good idea to make a commotion. Fortunately, I didn't. I'm pretty sure my reaction was something like, "Hey! Give me my thumb back!" expressed in a surprised and admonitory manner. I'm pretty sure I didn't punch a pony. The pony released my thumb, and I was sort of holding it in a possessive manner and looking for water to clean it off. Then, I felt *really* woozy and went up to the porch to sit down and drink some water. The weird thing about the situation was the way the kids seemed kind of nonplussed about it while the adults, in silent agreement, didn't freak out. When we were leaving, the husband-pony-owner offered to rig up the cart for rides, and my brother kind of smoothly replied, "I think we're ok on animals for now."

So, yeah, good party! At least I stayed out of the hospital.