There are two more of them now. LaMancha bottle baby monsters. Jessie's kids.
They don't have names either, Z is a very hard year, and they all look exactly alike except Pinky and that other one, Joemma, who is part Toggenburg even though she has no ears. The rest of them run around in a black blur, some are black and tan, some are black and cream, some are black and brown. They are all boring.
"Aren't they cute?" says the farmer, carrying them around.
Not really, I think. But what can you say.
To be polite, I try to pretend I am charmed by their puckish antics. Goodness! They're adorable! With their earless heads and their little monkey faces! Look at them knocking all the buckets over and dancing across the clean hay with their muddy footprints! What could be cuter!
Who has time to list all the cuter things than an earless-monkey-looking baby goat? Let's just start with a Nigerian Dwarf baby goat, maybe? By like 10,000 percent or so?
That brings us back to Hannah Belle Lecter, my daughter, who has been steadily achieving a more and more blimp-like condition. Each week Lori says, "she must be getting close," but since every year Hannah Belle is bred approximately 17 times (she enjoys breeding, what can I say, it's a free country) we never know exactly when she might kid.
But even I would say, as I see her lumbering across the pasture blotting out the sun with her bulk (not today, today it's raining), even I would say, "she must be getting close."
Mustn't she?
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Earth Day
It was Earth Day this week which gave us a good excuse to celebrate the force that through the green fuse drives the flower. Go flowers! But excuse me isn't every day Earth Day? Or is there a backup planet we will all be moving to?
If that's the case I hope there won't be so many bottle babies on it.
Especially of the LaMancha doeling persuasion, enough already with the earless terrors. This new one Pinky who is being called Zut Alors (she does look kind of French and believe me that's no compliment) while her real name is decided is perhaps the holiest of the terrors I have had to endure.
She was already pampered to death before she cracked her head open and after that she was practically carried everywhere on a satin cushion. Make a note of these two easy steps if you would like to create your own bottle baby monster.
Now she runs everywhere screaming. She pushes the other bottle babies off the slide. She fastens her jaws to the farmer's hand - or any hand that happens to be carrying a bucket of milk - like a lamprey eel. She t-bones anyone who tries to sit on the farmer's lap.
And then I get reprimanded for gently helping her find her way out of my stall.
"Don't hurt little Pinky now," says the farmer. "She's still recovering."
Oh please. Please.
If that's the case I hope there won't be so many bottle babies on it.
Especially of the LaMancha doeling persuasion, enough already with the earless terrors. This new one Pinky who is being called Zut Alors (she does look kind of French and believe me that's no compliment) while her real name is decided is perhaps the holiest of the terrors I have had to endure.
She was already pampered to death before she cracked her head open and after that she was practically carried everywhere on a satin cushion. Make a note of these two easy steps if you would like to create your own bottle baby monster.
Now she runs everywhere screaming. She pushes the other bottle babies off the slide. She fastens her jaws to the farmer's hand - or any hand that happens to be carrying a bucket of milk - like a lamprey eel. She t-bones anyone who tries to sit on the farmer's lap.
And then I get reprimanded for gently helping her find her way out of my stall.
"Don't hurt little Pinky now," says the farmer. "She's still recovering."
Oh please. Please.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Beautiful Day
It is important to keep track of the most beautiful days of the year, so you can remember them later. Yesterday was one of the top ten most beautiful days of the year. It was like old times - the farmer left all the pesky bottle babies and came and sat on the tank cover with me in the sun and scratched all over my back while I head-butted attention seekers away as necessary. It was a beautiful day, and today will be too.
Today will be a good day for a birthday, and somebody is going to have one: Jessie the so-called beauty queen Lamancha yearling is headed to the kidding stall right now.
It's a beautiful day. Don't let it get away.
Today will be a good day for a birthday, and somebody is going to have one: Jessie the so-called beauty queen Lamancha yearling is headed to the kidding stall right now.
It's a beautiful day. Don't let it get away.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
It Does A Body Good
Little Baby Z looked very bad yesterday morning. She had three shots of medicine: one for tetanus prevention, one to stop other kinds of infection, and one of vitamin B. She was shivering and lethargic and didn’t notice when the farmer moved her inside to the baby nursery.
She didn’t make even a peep, much less offer the kind of Grand Prix tantrum* she and her mother have down to an art form. Instead she just lay and shivered, eyes foggy and blank.
The farmer put a sweater on her. She kept shivering. The farmer put another sweater on top of the first sweater. She looked stylish – pink and white crocheted jacket over a black terrycloth undervest - but quite miserable.
The baby nursery is a little pen on the kitchen floor of the cottage. The pen is about four feet square and about two feet high and bedded with nice fluffy straw. It sits a few feet away from the woodstove so it can be made quite cozy.
The farmer put Baby Z in the baby nursery and left to do chores, checking back perdiodically. On the fourth check, late in the afternoon, the farmer coaxed her into drinking a large bottle of warm milk.
She seemed to wake up a little, and looked around in surprise, wearing the expression of the amnesia patient on a bad tv show – where am I? - before settling back to sleep.
On the fifth bed check, Baby Z was not in the baby pen. She had jumped over the fence and gone to look for her friends, leaving a trail of baby goat pee throughout the cottage and knocking over a stack of magazines used to start fires in the woodstove, then eating – or perhaps just chewing and spitting out - part of a New Yorker** cover.
She was dancing on the coffee table in the living room when finally apprehended.
And that’s why it is so important to drink your milk.
* When they add tantrums to the Olympics, bet on these two for Gold and Silver.
** (Editor’s note: do not use New Yorkers to start fires. It is not the right kind of paper. We know that. We ran out of newspaper inserts.)
She didn’t make even a peep, much less offer the kind of Grand Prix tantrum* she and her mother have down to an art form. Instead she just lay and shivered, eyes foggy and blank.
The farmer put a sweater on her. She kept shivering. The farmer put another sweater on top of the first sweater. She looked stylish – pink and white crocheted jacket over a black terrycloth undervest - but quite miserable.
The baby nursery is a little pen on the kitchen floor of the cottage. The pen is about four feet square and about two feet high and bedded with nice fluffy straw. It sits a few feet away from the woodstove so it can be made quite cozy.
The farmer put Baby Z in the baby nursery and left to do chores, checking back perdiodically. On the fourth check, late in the afternoon, the farmer coaxed her into drinking a large bottle of warm milk.
She seemed to wake up a little, and looked around in surprise, wearing the expression of the amnesia patient on a bad tv show – where am I? - before settling back to sleep.
On the fifth bed check, Baby Z was not in the baby pen. She had jumped over the fence and gone to look for her friends, leaving a trail of baby goat pee throughout the cottage and knocking over a stack of magazines used to start fires in the woodstove, then eating – or perhaps just chewing and spitting out - part of a New Yorker** cover.
She was dancing on the coffee table in the living room when finally apprehended.
And that’s why it is so important to drink your milk.
* When they add tantrums to the Olympics, bet on these two for Gold and Silver.
** (Editor’s note: do not use New Yorkers to start fires. It is not the right kind of paper. We know that. We ran out of newspaper inserts.)
Monday, April 13, 2009
Cross Your Fingers
The little doeling Pinky had a freak accident yesterday and we are very worried about her. She got a bad gash and lost a lot of blood. The farmer was wondering how much blood a little baby goat could have but didn't want to look it up because sometimes it is better not to know too much. On the other hand Pinky is very feisty and when the farmer tried to take her inside for observation and intensive care she pitched such a tantrum at being separated from her friends that it just wasn't worth it.
Anyway please keep your fingers crossed for little Pinky-Zena-Zinnia-Zedoary-Zinfandel-etc.
Anyway please keep your fingers crossed for little Pinky-Zena-Zinnia-Zedoary-Zinfandel-etc.
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Enough Already About the PJs
Jammies Jammies Jammies.
This is all I hear all day long.
Isn’t Jammies adorable. Look how tiny she is. Look at her cute little udder. Look how she loves the milkstand. Look how she gives the farmer kisses. Jammies Jammies Jammies. Look how she is growing a beard. (A sad little beard to go with her sad little eyes.) Jammies’ milk is so sweet and creamy, it is just like candy. Yada Yada Yada.
I am good and sick of it.
The other day one of the farmer’s friends came over and the farmer launched into the same tiresome Jammies Jammies Jammies monologue.
“Oh,” said the farmer’s friend. “I’d love to try her milk. Can I have some?”
The farmer turned all beady-eyed and started hemming and stammering and offering up crocodile regrets.
“Oh, I am so sorry, if only I hadn’t just used it. How too bad. If I’d known you would want some,” etc etc etc. The kind of excuse that is way too complicated. The farmer’s friend made a skeptical face.
“Maybe next time,” he said grimly.
“Maybe,” agreed the farmer, brightly. Translation: NEVER.
We all know there is plenty of Jammies milk hoarded up in the farm kitchen since the farmer has a terrible fear of running out of the world’s most perfect latte milk.
It was a sad display. Very sad.
This is all I hear all day long.
Isn’t Jammies adorable. Look how tiny she is. Look at her cute little udder. Look how she loves the milkstand. Look how she gives the farmer kisses. Jammies Jammies Jammies. Look how she is growing a beard. (A sad little beard to go with her sad little eyes.) Jammies’ milk is so sweet and creamy, it is just like candy. Yada Yada Yada.
I am good and sick of it.
The other day one of the farmer’s friends came over and the farmer launched into the same tiresome Jammies Jammies Jammies monologue.
“Oh,” said the farmer’s friend. “I’d love to try her milk. Can I have some?”
The farmer turned all beady-eyed and started hemming and stammering and offering up crocodile regrets.
“Oh, I am so sorry, if only I hadn’t just used it. How too bad. If I’d known you would want some,” etc etc etc. The kind of excuse that is way too complicated. The farmer’s friend made a skeptical face.
“Maybe next time,” he said grimly.
“Maybe,” agreed the farmer, brightly. Translation: NEVER.
We all know there is plenty of Jammies milk hoarded up in the farm kitchen since the farmer has a terrible fear of running out of the world’s most perfect latte milk.
It was a sad display. Very sad.
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
g.o.t.d.
We have not had Goat of the Day in a long time. Our goat of the day is Bertie. Bertie is Boo’s daughter, so she is half Nubian. That’s unfortunate but it can’t be helped.
Her real name is Sister Bertrille, but we call her Bertie, or Big Bird. She is big, and with her tiny winged ears she looks like a prehistoric flightless bird, a Nubian Dodo or some such thing. (Nubodo? Dodubian?)
The other half is LaMancha. She got the good half of each: she is gentle and kind like a sweet Nubian (her grandmother Marty, for example), but she shows up for work like a LaMancha. She can be put in a stall with the tiniest milker – Jammies the sad-eyed mini-Mancha is her roommate right now – and no harm will come to the teeny one. On the other hand, when you are ready to milk, so is she.
Last week Bertie performed a textbook delivery of a pair of pretty twin does. She did it without any fuss, drama, delays, or hijinks. Right now she is milking nicely and not screaming or kicking the bucket or running in circles aroound the milkstand, unlike certain dry yearlings who shall remain nameless.
So she is our Goat of the Day.
Congratulations to Bertie.
Her real name is Sister Bertrille, but we call her Bertie, or Big Bird. She is big, and with her tiny winged ears she looks like a prehistoric flightless bird, a Nubian Dodo or some such thing. (Nubodo? Dodubian?)
The other half is LaMancha. She got the good half of each: she is gentle and kind like a sweet Nubian (her grandmother Marty, for example), but she shows up for work like a LaMancha. She can be put in a stall with the tiniest milker – Jammies the sad-eyed mini-Mancha is her roommate right now – and no harm will come to the teeny one. On the other hand, when you are ready to milk, so is she.
Last week Bertie performed a textbook delivery of a pair of pretty twin does. She did it without any fuss, drama, delays, or hijinks. Right now she is milking nicely and not screaming or kicking the bucket or running in circles aroound the milkstand, unlike certain dry yearlings who shall remain nameless.
So she is our Goat of the Day.
Congratulations to Bertie.
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