(HELENA BOLOGNA/The Daily Campus)
Peruna has a funny bone, and he’s taken it to Twitter.
“The Internet in my stall doesn’t work too well…Why did they name such a bad Wi-Fi network after me??” he wrote on April 4, just a few days after joining the social networking site.
Later that week on April 7 he complained about the Student Senate elections.
“It’s the last day of elections. I still haven’t received my absentee ballot here at the ranch. I need to talk to President Turner about this.”
But if you’re wondering who’s behind @PerunaThePony, The Daily Campus can’t give you a name. The mysterious account launched on April Fools’ Day, and the person behind it isn’t revealing his identity.
“Someone very close to Peruna,” is all they would release when contacted for an interview. “I don’t want to reveal anything more than that so that the page is about Peruna, not the writer behind the screen. Not official though.”
@PerunaThePony has slowly gained followers since joining the social networking site. As of Sunday night, he had 54 followers. After asking for an interview, The Daily Campus editors compiled a list of questions and sent them to @PerunaThePony via Google Docs.
@PerunaThePony says he joined Twitter because, “After being the mascot for 78 some years, I figured it was time to get into the 21st century.”
“After all, aren’t we in the middle of the “Second Century” campaign?” he wrote. “Listen here you whippersnappers: back in MY day the only “tweets” came from the birds that lived on my ranch!”
Although @PerunaThePony isn’t talking about his identity, he did offer explanations for some of the mascot’s more infamous stunts, such as killing the Fordham Ram.
“Well, there were rumors about a “Death Penalty” flying around, so I figured they were counting on me to carry it out,” he wrote. “There can be serious consequences if you cheer against the Mustangs, you know.”
He says he only kicked Bevo because the mascot “is always drugged up at the games.”
“He told me he was clean, but obviously wasn’t at that game so I tried to snap him out of it,” he wrote. “I apologized for it later. He told me that he thinks those Silver Spur guys are slipping stuff in his water trough. Why would they sedate their own mascot!? If any of MY Handlers tried that…well…we all saw what happened to the Fordham ram.”
@PerunaThePony also explained how he and his handlers once snuck him into a taxi in Los Angeles before a game against UCLA. While he usually took a limo in “the good ol’ days when you could travel with more than 3.5 ounces of liquid,” that day was an exception.
“My driver apparently overslept and got stuck in the crazy LA gridlock before the game, so I had to call a cab to get to the game in time,” he said. “I didn’t want to let my team down. The guy was kind of weird and smelled like air freshener, but I got to the game in time, so I guess all’s well that ends well.”
As for Liberty and Justice, the two mustangs donated to SMU by Madeleine Pickens? @PerunaThePony says he feels kind of bad for them.
“It must suck to have once been a mustang but then…poor guys…Madeline Pickens found them, chopped off their manhood and trained them into tame little geldings,” he wrote. “A true mustang like me would never let someone put a saddle on them!”
