Herron Hill's Weeping Camel

On Wednesday several of the milkers got very sick from eating some bad grain. Jessie and Wronny are fine now. Winnie, Jr. is doing pretty well. Peaches was in terrible shape but she has perked up. The farmer is going to let her dry off. Xie Xie is still a little glassy-eyed and looks like she lost about fifteen pounds in three days. We will have to see if she can keep milking.

We lost Cammy.

Yesterday

Yesterday was a very sad and happy day at the farm. Since it is so gray out already I am going to tell the happy part. My cousin Cora Belle won Grand Champion at the State Fair in Puyallup.

From what I have heard there were a lot of beautiful doelings there, so Cora Belle started acting conceited before she even got out of the ring. By the time she got back to her pen, she had stopped taking personal calls and hired Tangy as her assistant. I think that is a mistake because in my opinion Tangy is not that much help. But who am I to tell the state champion how to conduct her affairs.

For the rest of the day Cora Belle would immediately strike a pose whenever she saw someone with a cellphone camera.

Tangy also won a blue ribbon but that was because she was the only one in her class. The judge kindly remarked that she was a perfectly presentable goat or something to that effect, and Tangy was delighted to go back to her pen without even performing any of her patented "swordfish" airs above ground. As soon as she left the ring an army of beautiful giant Saanens with ten gallon udders came supergliding in, making Tangy look like an apricot-colored miniature poodle.

You Can Do It At a Gallop

This morning there was a strange honking noise and we all looked up to see a flock of little pink pigs flying over the barn.

"Ok then," said the farmer. "Tangy is going to the Fair."

Goat Tears

I was in the house watching tv with the farmer and we saw the saddest commercial.

Wendell Has His Day

You know what they say, every dog has his day. And it is true. Even Wendell.

There has been a big bold coyote coming around and he is called B.D. for his habit of sauntering insolently into the goat pasture in broad daylight. Every time he comes, he comes a little closer.

The farmer runs at him and throws rocks and shoots at him with the pellet gun and he just doesn't care. He is an excellent judge of speed, which let's face it the farmer lacks, and he stands his ground until the last minute and then bounds away as if he was just leaving anyway and it is a coincidence that the farmer is running pell mell toward him hollering and throwing rocks.

The farmer always calls for Atty but usually Atty sleeps during the day and it takes a while to wake him up and let's face it once he is woken up it is pretty much a tie between him and the farmer as to who is the slowest. But Atty definitely puts on quite a display of woofing, I feel like clapping every time I hear it, it is very authentic.

The other day B.D. came right up to the fat lady pasture, leaving only the fence between them, and he looked the fat girls up and down as if he were peering into the lobster tank at a seafood restaurant. He comes around so often that the big ones - Bertie is a good example - don't even have sense to know they should stay far away from him. Bertie and Binky, in fact, were crowding up to the fence line to see if he maybe had some pockets with vanilla wafers in them.

Anyway the farmer caught sight of him and hove into view hollering and hucking rocks and calling for Atty. The farmer came on down the hill like a battleship being tugged out to sea, stopping now and then to pick up rocks, and yelling for Lori - "get the gun!" - and Atty - "ATTICUS!"

The farmer opened up the gate, thinking Atty was on his way, and grabbed some more rocks. But it wasn't Atty coming. It was Wendell flying like a little black bat out of hell and he shot past the farmer as soon as the gate opened and went straight for the coyote. The farmer was terribly alarmed since Wendell was maybe - maybe - half the size of B.D. But Wendell apparently didn't know it, he just went on like a dervish and scared the coyote so badly that it turned around and ran right into the fence where it caught for one scary moment with Wendell jumping at its throat like a good bulldog will do and then it sprang free and shot out through the hole in the fence where Melly goes out to eat hardhack in the meadow. Wendell was hot on his heels and acting like a true berserk.

Wendell and the coyote ran about a hundred feet along the fenceline and then both of them disappeared into the high grass, with the farmer lumbering along helplessly behind, yelling for Wendell to leave the coyote and come back.

Atty finally appeared, huffing and puffing, and ran along the fenceline in the wrong direction. "This way, Atty," the farmer yelled, pointing toward the canary grass into which Wendell and B.D. had vanished. But Atty flopped down next to the gate, spreading his paws out like a lion. He had used up his quota of running energy for the day.

"Wendell!" hollered the farmer, over and over, and in between yells it was all deathly quiet for several long minutes until you might almost start to wonder whether the coyote hadn't lured Wendell into a trap, but then we heard the wet snuffling of an overexerted boston terrier and a couple of seconds later Wendell's head bobbed up out of the grass, wearing a big delighted grin. I never saw a dog look more pleased.

And B.D. hasn't come back since then.

A Tale of Two Goats

My cousin Cora Belle came over yesterday for more fair walking practice for the goat show. It is incredibly dull and boring. The goat and the person walk around in a circle and that's it. That's the whole show. No popcorn or anything.

Just a goat and its person walking around in a circle joined by a few other goats and their people walking in a circle. Once in a while they stop and the person pokes the goat around a little bit, "setting it up" and making it look good. It's completely ridiculous.

I am very glad it has been decided I am not going to the fair. Anyway the whole thing was rather odd because Cora Belle seemed to enjoy it and she would let any person walk around with her, even a three year old, and would allow herself to be posed like a Gumby. I find it very strange that she is Hannah Belle's daughter; Hannah Belle will not obey anyone, not even the farmer.

But Cora Belle paraded around extensively and it was very dull until she was joined by Tangy.

Tangy used to be known as "the swordfish" for her style of walking, which is to throw herself up into the air and flap around like a marlin on a sportfishing show. We were all very impressed by it. But she has even outdone herself now.

Yesterday she was doing fair walking practice and she had a full-blown tantrum and threw herself up into the air and then flat on the ground. The farmer's friend who is a very very good showman did not let go of the collar as Tangy expected, just held on patiently with Tangy flopped completely on the ground.

Tangy refused to get up, turning her body into a boat anchor, which wasn't hard since she is the fattest yearling here. After a few minutes an ordinary goat would have gotten up, but not Tangy; instead, since she was already lying down, she took a short nap.

The farmer says she isn't going anywhere much less the state fair but I hope they do take her to the show because it was a lot more interesting than Cora Belle's style of white glove perfection. Cora Belle must get that from the Shirley Temple side of her family.



PS I forgot to mention all photos were taken by PETA representative Wendy Webster. No animals were injured but the farmer's elbow was slightly wrenched, not that anyone cares. In future we will try to get an observer from the Human Fund to insure that human injuries are kept to a minimum although there is no guarantee they can be avoided entirely since Tangy is part Nubian. Thanks.

Marty

The farmer unexpectedly found an old picture of Marty, the kindest Nubian who ever lived. But you can probably tell that just from looking, even though she is asleep in the picture. She loved to sleep with her head on her little daughter Marigold.

Cash For Clunkers

Hybrid vehicle. Runs on peanuts and grass. My cousin Filbert.

Pipe Gate Massage

Sometimes you can come within an inch of your life and not even know it.

And that is what happened yesterday.

Not to me, but to my Aunt Hannah Belle.

It was a red letter day. The farm had been rendered spotless. This was because the dairy inspector was coming for a visit. He came right on time and inspected all around the barn.

Even Walker the Talker, the little minimancha buckling who has something to say about everything, had been instructed to keep quiet.

The dairy inspector nodded at everyone in the barn. We nodded back, pretending to admire him. Then he put on a hairnet, which meant he was going into the dairy. The farmer went with him, and they were gone for about five minutes.

While they were gone Aunt Hannah Belle mysteriously appeared. She had been 100% banned from the barn during the inspector's visit, owing to her incorrigible behavior. In fact the farmer had put her down below with the fat girls and mended the little hole in the fence that Melly had made.

"That ought to hold you," the farmer muttered with satisfaction, having woven the field fence back together with an attractively rustic snaggle of baling twine.

Maybe the farmer shouldn't have said that.

We watched in shock and awe as she sashayed down the aisle toward the grain cans. She hannahbelled all three of them in rapid succession, spilling 150 pounds of dry cob and 14% dairy ration onto the barn floor in a seven foot swath.

She ate with lightning speed, like one of those people turned loose in a grocery store for ten minutes. Even Betsy was impressed.

Then for a change of pace she jumped onto my mountain of pea hay, knocking a few bales out of the stack while she searched for hay with the peas still on it. Even Winnie was shaken by her audacity.

A gasp went up as everyone heard the door of the dairy open. Aunt Hannah Belle scuttled away, moving like a worried crab with her feet seeming to rotate underneath her. She ran around the corner toward the pipe gate into the front pasture, and it seemed she had time to make a clean getaway, but then there came a familiar grunting noise.

She was stuck in the gate, too fat to squirt through from the angle she had chosen. Stone cold busted. The dairy inspector, three feet away, popped his eyes in surprise to see a fat little goat teetering between the pipes of the gate.

"What is that?" he said.

"Oh she gets stuck in the fence sometimes," we heard the farmer say nonchalantly. "She is a little bit fat."

"Isn't that cute?' said the dairy inspector.

"Yes," agreed the farmer grimly, looking daggers at Aunt Hannah Belle, who had shrewdly adopted the attitude of someone enjoying a nice relaxing pipe gate massage.

"Well, I better get going," said the dairy inspector. And he turned around and walked in the opposite direction. The farmer took a step into the barn, saw for the first time the hannahbelled cans and the wanton destruction of the one-goat buffet, and smoothly pirouetted back out.

"I'll walk you to your car."