Let’s Hear it for the Feet.

This is not a description of a scientific experiment. I know that, I am describing what happened in the hope that someone can check whether my idea has any merit or not. If it does, it could have major implications for horse and people safety.

Driving to London with a wheelchair enabled, one man, pony drawn vehicle, you need a pony. And if your ambition is to drive round Hyde Park, on your own, from a wheelchair, pulled by the pony, you have got to get the pony across London, and into Hyde Park. For the moment I will ignore the problems with the Police who discovered that Obama, the pony, was eating Royal Grass. Thank God he wasn’t smoking it, or there would have been a summary execution. As it was, it took 20 minutes to persuade the police that taking a scared animal back onto Kensington Gore, and driving at 3mph, at 4.30 on a Friday half a mile to get to the proper entrance for Hyde Park, was suicide. Their initial reaction was that at least Obama wouldn’t be eating the Queens Grass. No he would be splattered down Kensington Gore, which is probably how it got its name.

The reason Obama was so scared, was odd. We had been trying to operate off SatNav which doesn’t have a “pony frightened of heavy traffic” setting, and Obama was stressed. So was I, but it was my choice to be there. Trying to cross Kensington Gore, just west of Kensington Palace Gardens, I reached an impasse. Obama simply wouldn’t go across one bit of pavement. Nothing I could do would change his mind. he was permanently scared and intermittently terrified, but I could see, hear and smell nothing that explained the level of fear.

Later having done Hyde Park, we were heading for Paddington, safety and cheap grass, not Royal Grass, where Obama and I could camp in safety in the shade of the tower blocks, surrounded by people who wanted to help, and chat to Obama. Crossing some obscene new office development, obviously designed for hedge fund managers to sneer at the neighbourhood, Obama again threw a complete wobbler. Again, no logical reason, and indeed, apart from the terrifyingly smug, I’m all right Jack , school of architecture, there was no obvious threat.

But Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell, a biologist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California has shown that Elephants hear through their feet.. A pony’s feet are acoustic devices, just listen to one that hasn’t had metal nailed to it, going along the road. They are shaped like the end of a stethoscope, the end they freeze your tits with, not the end they stick in their ears. Is there any reason they can’t hear through their feet, if elephants can.

And wouldn’t the underground scare you rigid if you didn’t know what it was. It could have been water pipes, gas mains, sewers. I don’t know, but I strongly suspect that ponies can hear through their feet, and maybe, if some scientist can perform a simple experiment and prove this, people will think twice before they nail lumps of metal to their ears. Nailing it to feet is barbaric enough. to ears is sick.