Feeling the Heat

I lost Goat of the Year. I am not bitter though like some goats (Moldy) who keep complaining about it and can't get on with their life. The Farmer says next year we are going to do a one-vote-to-a-customer no-hack poll. That will never happen though.

Anyway Cora Belle and Winnie are flipping for the cover of the calendar. Whoever loses the calendar cover will go on the cover of the next edition of Goats Quarterly.

Back to our real lives. Some goats like me and the rest of my family can stand to lose a little bit of brainpower which unfortunately happens to everyone around here when they go into heat. I decided not to go into heat this year because it makes you look very foolish. If I have to go I will wait until this fall, since I already had to do weaning last fall and that was bad enough.

But yesterday Pinky went into heat for the first time. Pinky is Tangy's daughter. It is clear even to a casual observer that Tangy is no rocket scientist. Tangy is known strictly for her airs above ground and her orangey fur, medium orange unlike her mother's bright orange. Pinky is an even paler shade of apricot and the sad truth is she is not even as smart as Tangy.

Pinky distinguished herself in her early kid days by inexplicably running into walls and trees for no apparent reason. One time she ran into a wheelbarrow and cracked her head wide open. She has a lot of scars but luckily they are under her pale pink fur. Even I admit that Pinky is very sweet but that is really the only thing she has going for her.

How sweet she is is that she does not even head butt Moldy, which no one else can resist. Even the babies enjoy head-butting her. Anyway Pinky came in heat yesterday and stood outside Cowboy's pen all day long making moony-eyes at him. She didn't make a sound, just gazed at him like he was the Jonas Brothers' better looking buckly cousin.

When the farmer came out to get everyone to go into the barn for the night, a downpour started. So everyone ran pell mell into the barn just as it was getting dark. The rain went on and on through the night, sometimes dribbling, sometimes gushing, sometimes just a solid steady rain. It rained like it wanted to, Northwest winter rain with a mind of its own.

The farmer came out in the morning to feed. The farmer got a funny look going through barn, one of those wait-a-minute looks.

Sure enough, Pinky had not come in the night before.

The farmer walked out and looked down toward Cowboy's pen. There was Pinky, ten hours later, standing in the rain, not even bothering to move five feet forward so that she would be under the overhang, just sopping wet right down to the roots of her pale pink fur, and gazing moony-eyed at Cowboy, who at this point was fast asleep in his shed.

She hadn't noticed a thing. She was in heat.