Tuesday, June 03, 2008

My next 4x4

My Jeep is getting too expensive. So here I am with my new offroad vehicle: -- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

5 comments:

  1. I told you it would get expensive. And I'll bet the resale value is down. Well it went down the day you bought it so maybe that doesn't make any difference.

    It can always be used for a cat house.

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  2. Have you looked at the price of hay lately ?
    Also , I'm not sure , but I think large animal vets charge even more than your average mechanic , and there are no " shade tree " veterinarians .
    w3ski

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  3. i like it, although i've always preferred burros for cart duty, or pack saddle.

    burros are tougher, stronger pound for pound, more resourceful, able to forage better and all around a much smarter desert choice than horses.

    they're also smart enough to say "NO! EfuckingNuf." and bring the whole expedition to a stop.

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  4. bbc, the Jeep isn't going anywhere at the moment, but the days of motor vehicles are coming to a close, so it's the last motorized 4x4 I'll ever own, probably. Sad to say, the Jeep is too small and cramped inside to serve as a cat house, unless you're talking about for actual cats -- I tried sleeping in it one night during my last trip, and barely slept a wink.

    w3ski, burros eat grass hay when you want to supplement what they can forage for themselves, they don't need (and can't tolerate) high-protein feed like horses need. They also rarely need veterinary care. It's recommended that you worm them every few months and vaccinate them every year, but you can do that yourself by purchasing the required supplies from a veterinary supply store. The biggest need for a burro that's not spending all day foraging on rocky terrain is going to be hoof care, a furrier to keep the hoofs trimmed and neat is *not* cheap. Burros in the wild don't have furriers, of course, but they also live very arduous lives that wear down their hoofs rapidly and last on average maybe 15 years, while domestic burros can last 30 years or more.

    MB: Agreed on burros for cart or pack duty. This just happened to be a picture I ran across that struck my fancy. One interesting thing about burros for desert duty is that they need water less often than any other pack animal other than camels. The wild burros of the Death Valley area will drink, then they'll spend the next day foraging away from their water supply, then the next day foraging back towards their water supply at which point they drink again. They are also more nimble than horses. Some of the burro trails I see out there on the sides of mountains, a horse would look at and say "are you effin' NUTS!" and frankly if I hadn't seen burros or their hoofprints on those trails I would have sworn that nothing but mountain goats could have used them.

    And yeah, burros can be real jackasses (literally!) when they decide you don't know what you're doing. Quite humbling, that :-).

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