Phoebe and Her Unicorn by Dana Simpson for November 29, 2015

Silly Phoebe, only unicorns can be measured in unicorns.

More exactly, Florence’s caluclations show that Marigold is 1.1111111… unicorns tall.

By expressing Phoebe’s height in hands, is Marigold implying that Phoebe is a horse?

I think unicorns are measured in units of sparkles.

Phoebe is short to Marigolds tall.

Boobiehatch over on Sherpa

Phoebe should know by now that Marigold is far too special to be measured with a mundane unit of measure like that.

Phoebe is exactly 1 Phoebe tall; to 19 decimal points. And furthermore, she will always be exactly 1 Phoebe tall.

A hand, a foot, a span, a finger,or a nail:Measuring by body parts has been used since at least ancient Egypt.

The 4" hand for measuring the height of horses was standardized in England based on a King’s hand, (Henry VIII’s)

Don’t forget the digit, the span, the cubit, and the fathom.

The stone is exactly 14 pounds, 1/8 of an Imperial hundredweight, which is exactly 112 pounds, and 1/160 of an Imperial ton (also known as a long ton), which is exactly 2240 pounds. The stone is not used in the USA, and, in the UK, is now used only for weighing humans.

“A wonderful joy our eyes to bless,In her magnificent comeliness,Is an English girl of eleven stone two,And five foot ten in her dancing shoe!”

(Eleven stone two is 11*14+2 pounds, or 156 pounds.)

Of course, “hands” can mean different things to different unicorns…

bottles and cans

10.8 hands implies 10 hands and 8 inches, which is 12 hands, or 4 feet. A hand, in reference to a horse’s height from its withers (a ridge between the shoulders) to the bottom of its hooves, is 4 inches, and when there is an extra 1 to 3 inches, these are included after a decimal point. A horse with a height of 16 hands is 5 feet 4 inches high at the withers.

•16.1 hands: 5 feet 5 inches

•16.2 hands: 5 feet 6 inches

•16.3 hands: 5 feet 7 inches

If Phoebe is 4 feet in overall height, then Marigold appears to be approximately this height at her withers, as well.

However, it’s possible that for unicorns, a hand is 5 inches, and the decimal point works as it would in most situations, e.g. 10⅘ hands equals 54 inches or 4½ feet (according to Incredible Comparisons [©1996] by Russell Ash, this is the average height of a 10-year-old). This suggests that Marigold, too, is about 4½ feet high at the shoulders, her horn is about 2 feet long, and her overall height, not counting her horn, is 6¾ feet or 16.2 (unicorn) hands. Marigold therefore appears to be about 11 feet in overall length and 450 pounds in mass. From what she’s saying, Florence is about 4 feet 1 inch high at the shoulders, 10 feet long overall, and 340 pounds in mass, with a 21⅝-inch horn. Phoebe’s head and neck appear to account for about ⅓ of her overall height, so this would make her about 7.2 unicorn hands tall.

Marigold is presumably not an equid unicorn, for she has cloven hooves; horses have uncloven hooves. Instead, she must be a bovid unicorn, since bovids have horns and cloven hooves. Real-life bovids (cattle, goats, sheep, antelope, and goat-antelopes) have two horns, but of course, Marigold is a unicorn, so she has only one.