Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Just Goats

When you live on the farm you know firsthand that there is a time for every season. And right now we are in the middle of a season of sadness. We know it will pass, but that doesn't help today. Four years ago there was a similar time. Two of our old horses died exactly a month apart: one was 32 and one was 29.

The older one, Mo, just didn't want to go on living when his old friend died. We always try not to have favorites, but Mo was everybody's favorite horse. On the looks scale, he was just about a zero: a scrubby old pink-eyed appaloosa with a tail like a bottle brush. But there was never on this Earth a kinder horse.

Never.

Mo was so kind that he lived an extra two weeks so we could get ready to live without him: when Mo stopped eating, the farmer brought out a bucket of warm mash every morning and every evening and fed him by hand, one handful after another. He was too kind to refuse to eat it, even though he didn't want it.

But even that sadness felt right, in its own way. Mo was 32, after all, and horses don't get much older than that. And he loved almost every minute (he didn't really like the parts where he got wormed) of his long life. And he was ready to go.

This sadness is different. First we lost Stacy, out of the blue. And now my two grandsons, Charzan and Orzbit, have been killed by dogs. A group of dogs, just out killing for fun. Their owners allowed them to run loose.

Charzan and Orzbit were twins. They were ten months old. They were very much beloved. They may have been, as we sometimes hear people say, "just goats," but they were also gentle and silly and fun-loving. They were our friends. We miss them very badly and we feel sick when we think about the way they died.

Don't worry, boys, we won't forget you. Even though you were just goats.

3 comments :

Loner said...

you know they say that the longer you farm, the more you get used to death. I think that the moment a person gets used to it, he shoudl stop farming. Life is so very precious. We have lost a couple of babies the same way - and I am so sorry.

Anonymous said...

they were such good boys.

Anonymous said...

Like "Loner," I too have heard the callous "If you've got livestock, you've got dead stock." It riles me to no end. THese lives are precious to us, or should be ... or we have no business raising them. I've been very fortunate ... I've had dogs get in with mine three times, and some Blu-Kote and pennicillin was on hand each time. But I have lost one, Rameses (only 5 months old) to some hay-twine the goat-sitters left too close to the pen. I cried, and was morose for days. Still think about it each month on his "one more month old" day when I look out and see his sister Rose.