Friday, April 25, 2008

All Ashore

Well the SS Boo finally limped into harbor last night, late as usual and at the most inconvenient time imaginable. The farmer had surmised from the size of the cargo hold that there might be about 15 kids aboard, but in the end only two "miniature" Nubians toddled ashore.

Both are very pretty, like their mother. Both have frosted ears, like their mother. Both are fat and opinionated, and see if you can finish this sentence.

Anyway in unrelated news there was another Lamancha-Nubian-Nigerian IQ demonstration yesterday. The indoor kids (Winnie, Jr. with the broken leg, Tangerine, Widget, Hermy, Augustine, and Julius) played in their stall, where Winnie, Jr., being the biggest, is the king of the babies, a job she loves. Three of the indoor babies (Win, Tangerine, and Widget) are bottle babies. The other three are dam-raised.

Yesterday the bottle babies made the switch from the tiny pop-bottle nipple to the baby bucket, which has a bigger nipple and doesn't work in quite the same way. So sometimes it takes a while to catch on. Winnie, Jr. of course, being a purebred Lamancha, got it right away. Tangerine, being 7/8ths LaMancha, didn't have too much trouble but had to cry and sputter melodramatically a few times for effect.

Widget, being both a boy and 1/8th Nubian, was rather stumped, and jabbed his head desperately against the bucket, perhaps hoping to knock the milk out. To his credit, unlike a full-blown Nubian, he seemed to know that there was milk in there. He just couldn't figure out how to get it out.

Anyway, that was all about to be expected. What wasn't expected was that the rotund mini-Manchas (half Nigerian, half LaMancha) - Hermy, Augustine, and Julius - would watch for a few minutes, taking some simple mental notes, then scurry over as soon as the nipples were vacated and help themself to extra milk.

Hermy led the way.

Bottle baby, schmottle baby.

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