Atticus is our guardian Pyrenees. He tells us all where to go and what to do. He is very bossy. We don't always like him but we love him: he keeps everyone safe and won't even allow crows to land in the pasture.
Atticus is three, and up until last Thursday, he looked very fearsome. He was covered with a shaggy white coat which had acquired an impressive collection of mud mats and magnificent dingleberries over the rainy winter. Whenever the meter man even saw Atticus, he would jump into his truck and start throwing biscuits out the window while he raced backwards down the driveway, spewing gravel. It's kind of funny, because in spite of his size and his intimidating appearance, Atticus is actually very very gentle (as long as he is being obeyed). He lets baby goats jump on him and loves to have his tummy rubbed.
Anyway, last Thursday morning he looked, as usual, like a dirty white lion. Until a big mysterious van came up the driveway and a little lady in a smock got out. She and another lady put a muzzle on Atticus - !!! - and picked him up, despite the fact that he weighs well over a hundred pounds and does NOT like to be picked up, and carried him inside the van.
A long time passed. There was a lot of noise coming out of the van, including a sound like a weedwhacker going.
We wondered what was going on. We heard some swear words, which we are familiar with from the time the farmer had to cut Hannah Belle out of the fence. But mostly we heard that buzzing noise. Over an hour later the door opened and a 4-foot-tall poodle, blindingly white and clean and wearing a green bandanna, stepped sheepishly out of the van. We wondered what had happened to Atticus, and whether we should start cleaning the barn for fear the uber-poodle would dirty its immaculate paws.
The poodle was shaved within an inch of its life, but still it was magnificent, unmistakably the largest poodle ever to walk the Earth. We stood by in amazement as it approached, sashaying in an oddly familiar way. And then we all burst out laughing! It was Atticus!
Holy Cow! Wait until you see the pictures of the Extreme Makeover wrought by the mobile grooming lady!
Monday, May 01, 2006
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.
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.
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