Dead Horse Kicking

Nine very competent, accomplished, educated professionals and me were gathered to test a software package in a vendor facility. Six of the group were lifelong Alaskans, and four grew up with outhouses and hauled water. The shared stories of heated seats, Wards catalogs, honey buckets, broken ice and bears; all left me feeling like I'd missed out somehow, sort of, not really. But my favorite story was about the horse that jimmied the cabin door and died on the kitchen floor while the family was shopping in town. The heater was blasting and the aroma was less than enticing when the family returned. Try as they might, there was no budging the heavy animal out of the corner where he was wedged, even with a winch. In a unique Alaskan solution, the family allowed the cabin to freeze with the dead horse inside so they could simply chainsaw the animal into pieces easily removed and burned outside. Yup.