The Caning of The Pony

Saturday, The Pony was milling around restlessly while Hick was at his Storage Unit Store, and I was warming up leftover Chinese food. It was his second day out of his ankle boot, so maybe he was just kicking up his heels. He had already walked two miles on the treadmill in the basement workshop, while I was in town fetching my 44 oz Diet Coke. Back and forth, from living room to kitchen. Not pacing, but not standing still.

 

"Oh, Mom. There's a spider on the ceiling."

 

"I know! I saw it yesterday while I was sitting at the kitchen table playing Candy Crush. Is it over my head now? TELL ME! That's where I saw it yesterday. Over the sink. I'm not tilting my head back to look. That makes me dizzy."

 

"No. It's here in the living room. Behind the couch."

 

"Let me see... yeah, that's the one. Just a little spider. I knew I couldn't reach it with anything."

 

"I can't either, really. I can't jump with my ankle right now... I don't think I could reach it from standing on the couch."

 

"I KNOW! Use my cane! I mean my grandma's cane. That one I took to the casinos last week, for my knee." 

 

"And only used once..."

 

"Never mind about that! It's right here. Use the bottom of it to smash that spider. If it leaves a stain, we'll worry about that later. Just stand right under it, and poke that cane tip on it. WAIT! Let me back up. I don't want it to fall on my head!" 

"Here goes... GOT IT! Um. Mom? That didn't do anything to it. The rubber tip on this cane is CONCAVE! I only trapped it for a minute! You know what? Are you sure it's a spider? I think that might be a little scorpion. Look! It has pincers!"

"It DOES! I just thought it was one of those long spiders, not a round spider. But I definitely see pincers. Or two grabby hand-thingies. Spiders don't have that! GET IT THIS TIME! Use the edge."

"There. Got him!"

"Oh, no! Where IS he?"

"Stuck to the bottom of your cane!"

"Take him outside. Or here, let me get a paper towel and make sure he's smashed good! Or... uh... you could just scrape him off in the wastebasket like that, so I can't find him, and he'll crawl out and find me in bed and sting me with his bendy tail!"

"He's dead. I heard him crunch. Besides, when I poked him that second time, I saw his legs curl up. That means he's dead. That's how they move. Once their hydraulic system is broken, their appendages curl up, and they're dead. That's how arachnids move. Hydraulics."

The Pony usually knows his facts. Or else I might think he inherited his father's art of gaslighting me with stuff he thinks I won't fact-check.