Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Upstairs Downstairs

Wronny has been raising her two sons Halfway and Gulliver this year and since they are young princes they dine with Wronny everywhere she dines and Wronny dines everywhere since she is the herdqueen and she can eat whatever she wants and it doesn't matter who else wants it.

Wronny eats her grain and hay and then everyone else's hay and grain and the young princes canter along beside her muttering royal statements like "make way, make way, young princes coming through, peasantry please stand back," and so on and they stuff themselves with their silver spoons and by this time they each weigh about a thousand pounds and are as tall as a Shetland pony.  They fancy themselves the Upstairs Goats, and the rest of us are Scullery Maids.

"How kind of you," said Halfway the other day while he gobbled Xie Xie's dinner.

"You may touch my white spot if you like," said Gulliver after hogging all the alfalfa in the feed rack.

In between their ten times a day grain and hay feedings they each guzzle about a gallon of Wronny milk. Their idea of portion control is that they control all the portions.

Everyone else just looks at them bitterly and pretends to like them. "So handsome! So regal!"

"Would you mind just moving just a tad bit out of the way?" they are always asking, then hogging the best spots to lie down.

"Of course not," says everyone else, looking daggers at them.

Well the word came down today that they have been sold and are leaving for their new home very soon and the chorus of fake sadness that welled up would deafen the gods. The insincere expressions of sorrow were many and numerous, with nobody wanting to be outdone.

"Not! Not Gulliver and Halfway! Our two royal ponies! The sadness! The sadness I feel coming on! I'm sure it will hit me as soon as I stop laughing these anguished laughs!"

I did not want to tell them but I had to, it was only fair that they should know that after living their whole lives Upstairs, they will be going Downstairs without their mommy, and they had better start shopping for little frilly scullery caps.