Goats Gone Wild

The girls went out to feed the goats this evening. They're out there for about 5 minutes when Scarlet comes hauling butt onto the porch, "Mom! Spike's got his head stuck in the fence! UPSIDE DOWN!!!"

Wow. This is a creative new way to annoy me, even for you, Spike. Way to go buddy!


The offender

So then it's my turn to haul butt stumble awkwardly through the mud out to the goat pens. By the time I get there, he is no longer upside down, but he is still good and stuck. I try to thread his horns back trough the same square that he's got his giant head poking out of, only to have Mr. Wonderful start to fight me in earnest. Spike doesn't like having his horns touched; it makes him feel vulnerable and controlled. But I don't see any other way that we're going to get this mess dealt with, so I go behind him, inside the pen and try to wriggle both horns back through the hole while Archie and Gertie bob and weave and jump up on me, with the mistaken idea that I have some sort of foodstuff squirrelled away in my pocket. Three against one and the one is cold, breathless and pissed.

I finally get numbskull's head out of the fence, trudge back in to the house and have just sat down on the couch, when here comes Scarlet, all kerfuffled again. "Mama! Fritzen got out! We need help!"

Son of a &#%&@!!!

By the time I'm halfway out there with some alfalfa snacks to bribe the misfit mama back home, Liv yells down to me that she's already rounded her back up - crisis averted.

This sort of circus reminds me of when the girls were little. The minute you sat down after a long day, somebody needed something, pronto. It got to the point where my delirious sleep-deprived mind started to wonder if my girls had a sixth sense, or maybe some sort of buzzer rigged to the couch cushion to let them know the minute I sat down so that they could time their potty emergencies and midnight pukings just so. And now it would seem that the critters are in on it. No sooner do I lay my head down at night than I hear what *might* be a coyotes yip out back, or the low clang of Spike's bell, just outside my bedroom window, signaling a jailbreak. Some variation on this theme occurs daily. Can mama not get a moment of peace around here, for crying out loud? SERENITY NOW!!!