Ever see a goat in a garter belt?

John Denver said “life on the farm is kind of laid back.”  He obviously didn’t have any goats.  Because believe me, having a few attention-hungry, Houdini-like escape-artist goats around definitely adds variety and excitement to the mix. 

Most of the time I think raising goats is not all it’s cracked up to be.  I wonder if their introduction to the farm was similar to the path to hell, just paved with good intentions.  Granted, they are adorable and very affectionate.  But they can also escape from a four-walled, floored and roofed enclosure.  You have to watch them constantly.  Needless to say, they definitely keep things interesting.

The goats arrived unexpectedly (at least by me) about this time last spring.  My hubby came in with two pygmy goats in the back of his truck and announced that there they were – my goats – like a present or something.  This after we just had a discussion two weeks earlier when I explained that I didn’t feel comfortable tending to goats since I really didn’t know anything about them.  Right, that conversation never gelled in the hubby’s mind.  So now I had two, tiny, baby pygmy goats that he purchased from some dude off Craigslist.  I called the local vets, asked questions, tried to figure out if these animals were healthy or not and began taking care of them the best I could.  We named them Bonnie and Clyde and I was guessing that they were siblings.

After about a day, we figured out that Bonnie was pregnant.  It was kind of obvious when I was examining her and her tummy kicked me.  My best guess was that she was about five or maybe six months old – WAY too early to kid.  So, I called the vets again.  Went through the check-up, provided her with the extra nutrition she needed and crossed my fingers.  Read a lot about goats on Google.  I spent a lot of sleepless nights worrying.

And I wasn’t worrying for nothing.  In a few more days, it was obvious that she was not well.  Both goats looked poor to me, but the toll the kid(s) were taking on Bonnie was intense.  She literally started wasting away.  I consulted neighbors with goats, the vets again, the internet.  I tried to help her work it through her system, I gave her penicillin shots in case of infection, vitamins to help her cope, and I walked her trying to get her bowels to move.  I even gave her a baby enema at one vet’s suggestion.  And I can honestly say to you that I never thought I would ever give ANYTHING an enema, let alone a goat.  Everyone tried to tell me that when a goat gives up that there’s pretty much nothing else you can do.  I refused to believe that.  But nothing worked and she passed away, comfortably I hope, in her sleep a few days later.

That left Clyde.  Clyde is a non-neutered male who is about a year and a half old and he is completely obsessed with my husband’s attention.  He is totally in love with Jay- Jay is HIS person.  I would almost say that Clyde is gay (not that there is ANYTHING wrong with that), so deep is his affection for Jay.  But since our female is pregnant, he must just be bi-species.  Because it just doesn’t matter to Clyde if Jay is mad at him or not, he wants Jay there.  Clyde is a mini-Houdini, so adept at escape, that in order to keep track of him, we have to periodically tie him up to keep him from hurting himself.  In the amount of time it takes for Jay to harness Clyde and come back into the house, Clyde has managed to wrap himself around at least a dozen trees that didn’t exist when Jay left him, turn over his water bucket, scatter his feed, and become vocal at the travesty.  And dutifully, Jay walks back outside, releases Clyde from the harness, patiently untangles the cable, and reworks the line back through the trees that were not there before.  He removes the trees from the lot to be mulched.  All this time, Clyde waits patiently, nudging Jay affectionately with his head, standing there, chewing his cud, waiting until Jay is ready to put the harness back on him.  He does it at least 10 times a day. 

Clyde also likes to periodically get into the chicken lot and climb anything in the area.  He likes to climb; I’ve seen him stand on not much more than a fence post.  He just likes to be up there where he can see things I guess.  I love to watch him run – it’s like Pepe Le Pew from the Bugs Bunny Cartoons except in SUPER-fast motion.  He shakes his head like a tiger and terrifies my mother.  He also tries to break into the house through the sliding glass doors from time to time.  He wants to live with Jay, 24x7.  Clyde is so in love – so very much in love.  In fact, I just said last night that perhaps we should dress Clyde up a little, maybe put a garter belt on him, you know, to help with his self-esteem and let him pretty-up a little as he’s obviously got the hots for Jay.  Jay was not amused… but I only have to amuse myself and that’s easy.

Right now, we have two goats – Clyde is joined by the beautiful Bailey.  Bailey is NOTHING like Clyde.  She is a mamma’s girl.  A gift from a dear friend, Bailey is adorable and so pregnant that it hurts me to watch her walk around.  She is small and to quote the Bible, she is “great with child.”  Or kids in this case.  Unlike Clyde-Houdini, she stays put most of the time, and when she does escape, she just goes to the back deck and lays down in the shade.  She has the most beautiful blue eyes and her gentle little soul is so sweet.  I adore her.  She is funny – she rolls around in the grass, head-butts the cats, and just generally makes everyone who sees her smile.  She likes to graze my flowers – roses are her favorite.  I actually don’t know if I will have any roses bloom this year because of Bailey’s addiction.  Her babies are due in the next few weeks and in anticipation, we have bottles ready and Sav-A-Kid milk replacement just in case she has issues.  I am a sucker for babies – of any kind.  My son and I are so excited that we can’t even think!!!  But of course, then there will be more than two goats living on the farm.  And I imagine that will really up the crazy ante!  Anyway, let us know if you see a brown pygmy goat in a garter belt wondering around the backwoods.  Jay will be looking for him.

***NOTE - No goats were dressed in inappropriate underwear before, during or after the publication of this blog.  LOL

Rainy days and Tuesdays always get me down

I lost a favorite uncle last week unexpectedly.  He died on the way to the hospital.  He was a very sweet man and I loved him dearly.  I adore my aunt, who is now left to pick up the pieces of her life and move forward.  I do not envy her this task - I am so sad for her loss and I know there is not a damn thing I can do about it.  Time has to do it's magic.  Sadness has to be dealt with - and she will deal with it on her own terms.  Grief follows stages, it's a part of life.  Depression is another part of the process.

Depression is not something that I am unfamiliar with – in fact I once knew her quite well, intimately even.  I have lived long enough to have been through a few serious depressive episodes in my life, so I am able to recognize her seductive touch and identify her provocative scent.  She paints in brushstrokes of pale shades of gray with a whiter shade of pale around her edges.  She smells like the woods after a rain, so sweet and tempting and easy to slip into and become lost.  She reaches out with cool, feathery fingers and touches my face.  She is sadness and she draws me into her comfortable embrace, and I cry.

As a teen and young adult, I wallowed in depression and clung to sadness.  I imagined myself a poet and was always able to create beautiful words from sadness in both poetry and stories.  I would write pretentious essays on the state of humanity, weaving webs of melancholy, tugging on emotions and hoping to make people feel that pain in their bones.  I was never able to write when I was happy… there had to be something tragic happening to create those beautiful words and phrases.  That’s how I saw misery, as an exquisite, creative space to inhabit. 

I so didn’t have a clue about life.  I was so secure in my superior knowledge of what everything really meant.  I was arrogant about my intelligence, knowing that no one was right except me. Life had to knock me down into a real depression before I realized that it is not a good place to be.  I had to learn. 

I had to see for myself that misery does not love company and that it can barely stand to be in the same room with others.  That sadness can make it hard to breathe the way it clenches your heart.  I didn’t know how much depression hurt.  Before my bout, I was a poser, grasping at ideas from Romantic poets and Jim Morrison from The Doors.  Of course, they were all on drugs.  I was trapped in real pain for a long, long time.  I lost months of my life.  That was the toll that grief took on me.  And I recognize her now and shudder and do all the things I can do to keep her at bay.  I don’t want to lose myself in her heartbreak – I want to see the sun.

Of course, experience makes all the difference.  I was a late bloomer, in all things, from puberty to relationships, I never have followed what one would call a “normal” schedule.  And I came to redefine many of my terms in my late twenties and early thirties including intelligence, passion, seduction, happiness, wonderment, creation, beauty, and forgiveness. 

Probably the hardest thing anyone learns is how to forgive themselves and shake off those petty personas that we clutch to because we’re so afraid to be known for ourselves – who we really are.  It’s a dangerous game to let down those mysteries we shroud ourselves in and be seen, naked and ugly, before the world and to hell with judgment.  But I’ve done that and am stronger for it.

Now I embrace the happy days, life filled with beauty and joy, the smile on my son’s face, the sparkle in my husband’s eyes, the way the ducks waddle around oblivious to weather, and the magnificence of the peacock when he spreads out his tail.  There is beauty and magic in everything – we only have to look to see it.  We only have to open our eyes to be blinded by possibility.  I refuse to waste another day wasting away.  You should too.