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This came out of nowhere (well not nowhere, but the post is nothing compared to the little 1 liner joke that spawned it) on the SW Forums (Darkspace) - much respect goes to Drow for this hilarious bit of cheese-inspired work =D
-2 / 9 / 2005
People often ask, “How smart is Coeus?”. I always reply that he is a very intelligent creatures and quick to learn. He will usually learn and remember a behavior with as little as three repetitions. Some behaviorists say one measure of intelligence is deductive reasoning, or the ability to work through a problem. Food is a great motivator, and I have seen him be very clever to get to the munchies. When we are training him, we wear a little pocket apron filled with grain to reward him. When done, we often hang the apron on a hook in the tack room with the leftover grain still in the pocket. On occasion, we forget to pull the tack room door firmly closed, and he will sneak in there, lift the aprons from the hook, and shake them all over the floor so he can snarf up the grain.
One day after doing some training, I was working in the pasture doing a little poop scooping, and still had the apron around my waist. Coes crept up behind me and, with his lips, deftly pulled on the bow string at my back, untying the apron and causing it to fall to the ground.
But today, they he outdid himself in ingenuity. We had been feeding him free choice hay. We’d put a whole bale in the manger, and he could munch on it anytime he wanted. With all the snow and ice that we have had all winter, he was becoming a barn potatoe, and lounging around the manger all day, not going outside for any exercise, and starting to put on some pudge. We decided to start rationing out his portions, and spreading it out on the snow where he would have to go out and forage a little for it. He looked on this as a new adventure, and would come boinking out into the pasture when they saw me shaking out some hay.
He dosent eat a whole bale at a time, so the remainder of the bale we were keeping in a hay bag, a specially designed canvas bag, that is the exact size of one bale of hay. It has a fully zippered top, and I placed it in an out of the way place in the barn.
Today, I was a couple of hours later than usual going down to feed him, and I worried that he would be anxious about their breakfast. When I walked into the barn, I saw that he had been up to mischief. The hay bag was dragged into the middle of the barn floor, and hay was strewn all over the barn. I expected that the bag had been demolished, but upon closer inspection, I discovered that the bag was entirely intact, with the exception of a half-dollar size hole in one corner, that a mouse had chewed while it was being stored in the loft. The boy had somehow figured out how to use a zipper. He had used his nimble lips to work the zipper completely open and had had a party, eating the hay, tossing it all around, and then rolling in it. Who needs thumbs when you have opposable lips?
-Drow
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