The Junior Channel

We have two LaMancha bucks here. One is Viceroy the Nice Boy, he is older so he is the boss. He is a nice boy and he does almost everything nicely. The other is Junior. Junior seemed to be kind of boring when he first came here. He never did anything, didn't try to escape, didn't jump over anything, didn't knock anything down, certainly didn't eat any rosebushes.

The only interesting habit he had was he wouldn't walk with the farmer. If the farmer put a hand on his collar he immediately dropped on the ground like a pancake.

"Oh, really?" the farmer said, the first couple of times he did this.

"Oh, really?" is something which if you hear it it is your last chance to avoid reaping the whirlwind. When Hannah Belle hears the farmer say "oh, really?" she immediately stops what she is doing - eating grain from a knocked-over garbage can, usually - and goes to stand by the door to the punishment stall to be let in. She stands in a posture of mock humility and regret - head down and deflated, humble and apologetic.

Really, it's quite convincing. Utterly fake, of course.

Junior isn't dumb and he soon learned that his style of 'walking' would prevent him from ever going to meet any girls. So then he walked tolerably well. Not perfectly but tolerably well. He stopped his pancaking ways and returned to being dull as dishwater.

Until recently. Maybe it's because he's two years old now, but anyway Junior has started developing a personality.

His favorite thing to do is pretend he is scared, kind of like a Haflinger. If he sees the tractor he sometimes, depending on his mood, runs around dizzily, puffing and snorting. He isn't really scared, just pretending to be scared.

His new hobby is to pick up his feed bucket when it is empty and put it on his head upside down so that he can't see. Then he pretends he is scared and runs around in a circle, carefully so as not to bump into anything. Then he takes the bucket off and looks around to check if anything changed while he was invisible.

No. Then he puts the bucket back on and trots around for a few more minutes. Off again. No change in the visible world. Back on again.

When he does it now and people ask if he needs help - "look," they usually say, "that goat has a bucket stuck on his head" - the farmer says no.

He doesn't need help. He is just watching the Junior Channel.

Hello. I am today’s guest goat. My name is Winnie Junior. It is pronounced Winnie JUNIOR. If you are calling me, call out “winnie JUNIOR!” Actually you do not need to call me. If I see you I will run over and attach myself to you. I am one of the velcro goats.

I am the captain of the hiking team because I will follow you anywhere you go except into the shower although on a hot day I might do that too if the shower is cool and refreshing.

I have an assistant. My assistant’s name is Binky. Some day I would like to saw her in half but for now she just follows me around assisting me and I tell her to calm down if she falls in the creek which happens more often than you might imagine.

The creek is like a magnet to Binky. I think her bones are made of willow which makes her get attracted to water but this is just a theory. She is very springy though, just like a good willow switch or a divining rod. Anyway for future reference if you are hiking with Binky do not go by any deep creeks because she is only two feet tall. Also when she falls in if I am not there when she starts screaming just yell, “Calm down, Binky!”

She is my assistant and I do need her so don’t just leave her in the creek. If she gets a brain freeze you might need to find a farmer to carry her out. A logger could probably also do it if there is no farmer nearby. Just someone with boots and common sense.

Thank you for your time.

Snowberries

q. Is there anything prettier than goat berries in the snow?

A. Yes.

Snow Day

We had another snow day. And here are the pictures to prove it.

Captain Who?

There is a new gentleman visiting us. He has beautiful blue hair and a beautiful fringe and a beautiful Superman-style spit curl over his forehead. He also has the beginnings of a magnificent snowy beard. Did I mention he is beautiful?

Hmm. I may need to do some stretches in case I need to jump anything.

TTYL.

The Princess and the Pea

It is possible for someone who is extremely good-looking to have funny-looking relatives. You probably know this from your own experience looking around the dinner table at Thanksgiving at some of the pasty-faced chubby-cheeked flat-haired thin-lipped single-eyebrowed (etc) family members who share (can you believe it?) your DNA. Brad Pitt’s brother for example looks kind of like a gerbil. I have nothing against gerbils, I just wouldn’t want to look like one. And then there is my half-sister Snow Pea.

Snow Pea looks like a footstool with ears. In fact, she looks like someone bought her at Ikea and put her together with one of those allen wrenches you can never find when you need it. A footstool that people would look at and say, “is it supposed to be that low to the ground? Why are there two screws left over?”

She completely lacks what the Goat People call “dairy character.” She is square and very well-padded and her legs are only a couple of inches long. This comes in very handy when scarfing up food dropped by others, which is one of the reasons for Snow Pea’s impressive upholstery.

Snow Pea also has a little bit of a personality deficit. When she first came here with me years ago she was very shy of people and would run away squeaking miserably if anyone tried to pet her. She got over this because of her Achilles heel: she loves to be scratched so much that she soon becomes very attached to anyone – the farmer for example – who will sit down and scratch her shoulders. In fact, it is possible to put her into a hypnotic trance by doing this.

But among us goats, she is down at the bottom of the pecking order and a little bit of an outcast. She doesn’t seem to care; she likes her little niche. And she only has two interests. Food, of course. And her boyfriend Captain January.

If you know anything about Snow Pea you know that years ago she had one set of twins. Well, she had all kinds of problems because she was really too fat to kid, and she ended up having a c-section. Since then she has not been allowed to have any kids, and so when she comes into heat she shows astonishing initiative in her special brand of low-to-the-ground escapery.

The Pea is too short and fat to jump anything, so the farmer was very surprised to find her wagging her tail outside CJ’s honeymoon suite yesterday, since it is two high fences away from her pasture. The farmer put her back where she belonged and then watched from a distance as she burrowed under the fence into the neighbor’s pasture, scuttled along inside the blackberry bushes, crammed back under the neighbor’s wooden fence where Wendell the Pest has worn his little wormhole, and burrowed again under the garden fence adjacent to CJ’s pen.

Not even Hannah Belle has thought of doing this.

Anyway the horse trailer is full of grain so the farmer frogmarched her right into my stall. I am tolerating her, but she has to sit in the corner and not touch my food.

Sit, Snow Pea. Stay.

Saddest Day of the Year

Every year we mark our calendar for the saddest day of the year. It came two days ago. After struggling mightily through several milkless days and exhausting the Christmas Starbucks gift cards, the farmer finally bought a quart of milk at the store.

Cow milk of course. Awful stuff. Just awful. I pity the calf who would even consider drinking it.

That brings us to the kidding countdown: the farmer's special pet Wronny, the world's most perfect milker according to the farmer, even though she has come in last place at every show she has ever been to, unlike my family, which always brings home scads of ribbons, most of them blue, but anyway we can't all be beautiful, will be the first to kid.

The fabulous last place ("I prefer to think of it as fifth place," the farmer insisted this year after the fair, since only four other goats showed up in Wronny's class) Wronny is scheduled to kid on April 3rd. She has never had a buck kid so we are laying odds on that, and even though she has always had twins, I am going to go out on a limb and bet she has triplets.

And speaking of long odds, the farmer has vowed to keep showing Wronny until she doesn't come in last. Then she will retire in a blaze of mediocrity.

So the world will be waiting with bated breath for that wonderful day when Wronny comes in next to last. Personally, I would take the Cubs in four games in the World Series first.

The Fainting Cans

Today there was an unfortunate occurrence.

I do not know who did it although actually I know who did it. The Goat Code prevents me from mentioning who did it. If I knew. Which even if I just said I knew I might have misspoken. I’m sure it was an accident, anyway. Or maybe not. Who can say.

Sometimes things just fall over. Fainting goats for instance. They walk along, then all of a sudden whoopsie daisy, they fall over. Who can explain it.

Anyway as you know there was an earthquake this morning and as this picture clearly shows there is no seismic strapping on the cans.

Luckily for someone who shall remain nameless there was a guest visiting at the time of the unfortunate occurrence. “Oh look,” said the guest, “the grain cans fell over.”

The farmer chuckled, pretending to be good-natured and jolly, since there was a guest.

“So they did,” said the farmer, “ha ha ha.” I noticed at this point my daughter Hannah Belle carefully averting her eyes from everyone and sliding in behind Boo the Winnebago so that only the tip of her tail was visible.

Unfortunately just at that moment Boo intuited with the food-oriented part of her brain, which works several thousand percent better than all the other parts, that the guest might have access to some type of cookies or peanuts, and stampeded herself up to the stall door in a single lightning maneuever.

This left a certain party standing in plain view in the large hole in the daylight vacated by the Boobago.

“Oh, hello, Hannah Belle,” said the farmer, with an ominous smile.

Quake Detector

The farmer was waked up this morning by a very polite little earthquake that rattled the pocket doors in the farmhouse and then went away.

That felt like an earthquake, the farmer thought, but since the dogs weren’t barking, the farmer went back to sleep.

That is one useful thing about dogs, possibly the only useful thing. If there is a big earthquake coming they will start barking and barking about thirty seconds before it hits. They will really bark, like they are going crazy, worse even than if the FedEx truck and the UPS truck came at the same time.

What they are saying is, “RUN OUTSIDE! RUN OUTSIDE!”

During the last big earthquake the farmer was on the phone when the dogs started barking in the most deafening manner imaginable. The farmer put one hand over the phone and yelled at the dogs.

“Be QUIET!” the farmer yelled, but the dogs wouldn’t stop. Then the earthquake hit.

“EARTHQUAKE!” the farmer yelled, pointlessly, since the dogs already knew about it.

The books were jumping off their shelves. The brickwork in the living room toppled with a crash. Outside the window, the whole world was swaying. The horses galloped crazily around their pasture, screaming.

“RUN OUTSIDE!” the farmer yelled, and ran for the door.

Duh, thought the dogs, and ran outside with the farmer.

Mmmm

I got a Starbucks card for Christmas from the farmer's father and today I used up the last bit of it with my final pumpkin scone. I employed my patented 'Shaq' maneuver to box greedy Melly out (it was pretty easy with her bad leg). She didn't get even a crumb.

All in all, very gratifying.

Baby Belle's Helpful Hints

As you know Miss Melly the 3-legged goat has been sharing my “private” stall after her accident. This has given me an opportunity to spend some time with her. In the spirit of helpfulness I would like to make some suggestions which may allow her to improve the serious deficiencies in her personality, hygiene, grooming, and behavior patterns. I have neither the time nor the space to detail all of her flaws, so I will just touch on a few of the most nettlesome.

1. The Beard. As you know I am universally admired for my magnificent snowy beard. Melly’s beard on the other hand is the type of beard which if anyone even noticed it they would say, “oh, are you trying to grow a beard?”

Scraggly is one word that springs to mind. Sad perhaps would be another.

The words which definitely don’t leap to mind are “magnificent” and “snowy.” My suggestion would be that Melly should approach the LaMancha doelings – any one of them would be happy to chew it off entirely. Winnie, Jr., for example just yesterday ate a piece of weather stripping twice the size of Melly’s “beard” in a matter of seconds.

2. Food hogging. Miss Melly is a food hog. When the food comes she acts as if it all for her, when in fact it is my food which I am of course willing to share as soon as I have finished eating everything I want. Not to mention that it is my stall and she is a guest. I would refer her to Miss Manners (waiting for hostess, page 147), who describes with elegant simplicity the sorts of minimal table manners required in contemporary polite society.

3. Ear biting. Melly is an ear biter, an unfortunate habit she acquired after spending too much time with the Toggs and mini-Toggs. Suppose you are eating your dinner in your private home and one of your so-called guests bites your ears in an attempt to get you to conclude your repast so that they may hog your food (see above.) Just imagine that scenario. There is really only one civilized solution to this problem: stop it.

4. The Water Bucket. Every day Melly tips over the water bucket. Why?

5. Heat. As every goat knows, it is only polite to bundle up together at night for heat. If you don’t like your co-sleeper(s), you can go head to tail instead of the friendly method – head to head with one neck draped over the other in the nesting pattern preferred by babies and family members. Melly makes no attempt to do this.

Was she born in a barn? YES, but so was I, and my manners are exquisite. Join me in exhorting her to improve her deplorable behavior. The Bush Years are over, Melly. It is time for a return to decorum.

Trouble Loves Company

My daughter Hannah Belle and Breezy's daughter Miss Melly used to go around getting in trouble together when they were kids. They hopped a lot of fences and stole a lot of grain that didn't belong to them. They just laughed when they got lectures from the farmer.

Because of those two, we had to switch all our new fencing to five foot fencing instead of four foot.

Anyway, Hannah Belle learned her lesson one day: she tried to jump a fence and didn't make it over. Her foot caught on the top wire and she was left swinging upside down about a foot off the ground. Well, that day was one of the luckiest days of her life because she did it right in front of the farmer and the farmer freed her within a minute or two and all that happened was she limped around for a day or two.

And after that she learned her lesson. She doesn't jump wire fences any more. She specializes in wood fences and panel gates, and fat as she is she has perfected a limbo-like maneuver that will get her through just about any five panel gate from any farm store in the country. It is something to see.

It saves a lot of jumping, and it makes sense. Why go over the gate when you can go through? That's what they were designed for, after all.

Anyway, Mel had much the same experience when she was a kid, except she broke her leg on her jumping maneuver. It was a clean break and it healed with no problems, and we thought she too had learned her lesson.

No. Yesterday she pulled the same bone-headed ploy and wound up with a leg caught in the fence. No one knows when it happened, but by the time the farmer got home and found her, she had been there so long that she wasn't even crying any more, just shaking, standing on her two front legs. Luckily she got far enough over that she was able to hold most of her weight on her front legs. One of the back legs was caught about four feet off the ground, with a deep cut around the ankle where the wire wrapped tight.

The farmer cut her out and gave her some medicine and now guess who I have for a roommate in my supposed-to-be-private stall?

A three-legged nitwit. Somebody tell me why this goat is getting fig newtons and room service instead of a lecture? Hello? The Nubians have more sense than this, for pity's sake.

Turning on the Heat

Well some of you may remember my daughter Hannah Belle. She is known for her safecracking bail-jumping troublemaking ways. The fence has not been built that will hold her. She has been a very bad girl since she was very small; when she was about a week old she snuck down into the apple pasture, found a hole in the fence, scampered through, and went to sit in the neighbor's lap.

The neighbor was digging postholes, and had sat down in the field to take a rest. The farmer looked high and low all through the barn, under the cabana, inside the buck pens, yelling for Hannah Belle the whole time.

Anyway she was asleep in the neighbor's lap. He didn't seem to want to give her back, either, which was odd.

Well lately I have been under the weather so I have my own stall. It is a private stall, as I mentioned earlier, and since I got Mabel kicked out no one has bothered me. It's nice having a private stall.

But sometimes it's a little lonely, and sometimes it's a little chilly even with my new jacket.

Anyway yesterday Hannah Belle waited for the farmer to go in, then jumped over the wall in the milker stall into the LaMancha doe kid stall, and over that into the aisle of the barn.

Then, instead of knocking all the grain bins over like she usually does, she escaped into my stall. The farmer came out at bedtime and looked at her and didn't say anything.

Then this morning the farmer came out and she was still in with me. It is a lot warmer with a nice fat daughter sleeping next to you. Consider that if you ever decide to sleep in a barn in January.

"You are a good daughter," the farmer said, and gave Hannah Belle an animal cracker, which she is completely banned from having because she is so fat and so good at stealing grain.

Today

Today was a nice day but a tad nippy, so I wore my jacket (see previous post).

I roamed about doing as I pleased. At bedtime I got Mabel the mini-Mancha booted out of my private stall where she was sojourning for a couple of days while she waits for her turn in the honeymoon suite.

She is not as bad as some of the full-size LaManchas (Winnie), but I'm sorry, does the word "private" not mean anything any more?

I signaled discreetly to the manager to have her removed when she started eating my special hay after I had told her not to touch it.

The farmer advised me from now on to live for today and to stay in the moment, so that's exactly what I am doing.

I did not mention that that's what I was doing before, too.

My New Jacket

This is my new jacket.

I think it looks good.

I know it looks good.

I wear it when I go out in the cold or rain (never, why would I go out in the rain? I'm not a Nubian) and at night when it is chilly.

It has officially been made official that I am the only goat on the farm who can go anywhere I want any time I want and do anything I want when I want to do it, and I can eat anything I want, with the wrapper on if I so desire, and Wendell the Pest is not allowed to annoy me. This is not news to me but I have been playing along like it is a big surprise development.

Tomorrow is supposed to be the first in a string of non-rainy days and I am going to help the farmer do a massive barn cleaning. This means while the farmer is working I will eat any hay that happens to fall off the stack. Something always falls off the stack during barn cleaning, although sometimes it is just a cat. I may also go on a short hike to eat some salal and huckleberry. It is so very delicious this time of year.

I might wear my new jacket even if it isn't raining, just to make a Northwest REI Goat type fashion statement.

The 101-Year Flood

This morning for the first time in several days we saw a fat sliver of sun. We think that’s what it was, anyway. It was in the southern sky, and it opened and then snapped shut quickly, like the fly window on an old Volkswagen Bug. The wind was rushing in from the West.

There is a quiet morning-after feeling like there always is after a big earthquake or a whopping deluge or a ferocious windstorm. For the moment it has stopped raining, and the temperature is dropping, which is a good thing.

The horses got their raincoats off. Willen was very pleased; he hates his raincoat and always tries to twist it off or rub it off anyway. He just got a new one for Christmas and he has already torn one of the leg straps. How rude.

Personally I like a nice jacket, something with a fleece lining if possible and a waterproof 1200 denier ripstop outer shell. By the way, my birthday is in June, and I wear a size XL (if it is a dog coat). And a “medium-large Nigerian Doe” if it is a goat coat.

Speaking of my birthday, I also like Swedish Fish (the red ones), but other than that I never eat seafood.

All the East-West mountain passes are closed. The freeway is closed for a twenty mile stretch through Chehalis on the North-South corridor with two feet of water over the road and the three rivers in that area yet to crest. The trains aren’t running because the tracks are flooded. So if you want to get out of Seattle right now you need an airplane to do it.

In our little corner of the Sound, the farmer drove halfway across a little bridge in the dark last night before realizing that there was water about six inches over the road. It was just a little creek, but for some reason it thought it was a river. Anyway, once you are halfway across it’s better to just keep going, and that’s what the farmer did without any problem. Luckily, should the need have arisen, the farmer floats – I have seen this myself - like a can of beer.

Lost Beaver Lake has filled in completely. Every valley in the whole western half of the state is just about completely flooded, which doesn’t lend much credence to last year’s talk of the December ‘07 flood being a 100-year flood. But even though it is terrible, sometimes it is also beautiful.

Anyway, at some point if you get a 100-year flood every year you have to think about calling it something else.

And a one-year flood doesn’t sound very good.

But I’m just a little white goat, what do I know.

Pineapple Express

We wished the snow would stop and we got our wish. We are in the middle of a full-blown monsoon. It is 53 degrees. Lost Beaver Lake is back and up to 20 inches of rain are predicted by the time the Express blows out of town tomorrow afternoon. All the mountain passes are closed because the rain is bringing down avalanches, and almost every river in Western Washington is at or near flood stage. I was supposed to go the vet today but I got out of it until Friday, that's the only good thing.

We do not dare to wish for anything now, because we will certainly get it.

Just to be clear, we want nothing, we wish for nothing.

Ooommmmm.

Goodbye, Sunshine

You can know something sad is coming, but that doesn't make it any less sad when it comes.

Valley View Hannah's Marquee died last night.

We could say a lot about his conformation and his dairy character and his champion daughters.

But right now all we can think about is his unbelievably endearing disposition, how he loved the summer, how kind he was, and how lucky we were to have him. If you have a Nigerian or a mini from our farm, and your goat is sweet and smart and funny, we can tell you without looking at the papers that your goat is related to Marquee.

Goodbye, Sunshine.

The Fence Magician

Helo to everyone this is hannahbelle. blue went into heat and cannot think so I am running the blog after all. right now i am in a stall with Captain January. he looked really good yesterday but not today. he certainly could fix himself up. his hair is an awful sight and as far as hjygiene forget it.

penrose is in here too and her and me have been giving each other looks like, "what happened to this dude? is it just me or did he look really good yesterday?"

also I thinkl both of us are wondering "what kind of captain is he anyway?" He doesn't look very military, what with the grooming deficits and all. its funny the things you think of the day after you were in heat.

whatever.

big brownie didn't die after all, just needed about 4 gallons of transmission fluid. as of thios moment Big Brownie needs constant trannfusions of power steering fluid, motor oil, transmission fluid, and various other car electrolyutes to keep from dying every few minutes.

what kind of life is that? Pull the plug, I say.

tubster is in trouble because she got hold of the farmer's bag of gourmet Christmas popcorn and pulled it through the wire fence while the farmer wasn't looking and ate the whole thing bag and all. she's like a little magician when it comes to pulling things through the fence. she's much better than that guy who's always on tv hanging upside down in a straightjacket in Times Square.

if you put vanilla wafers or peanuts inside a piano she would pull the whole thing through the no-climb fence while you went to fill the water bucket. grand piano, any kind, it wouldn't matter. poof.

that's the news from lake snowbegone.

Guest Blogger, or It Could Be Worse

Hello everybody. I don't feel very good so I am going on some special medicine from the vet and my daughter Baby Blue will run the blog for a few days while I am recuperating.

My daughter Hannah Belle Lecter was going to run the blog but she went into heat and can't think straight. Right now she is thinking in a strictly circular direction. Also she lacks a certain, how shall I say, literacy. Blue is much more scholarly.

In other news Willen and Marquee got new jackets. Willen's is purple and he looks very princely in it. Marquee's is blue and he looks like a really old buck in it. But with a good personality.

The snow is melting like mad. Right now it is the ugliest dirty white mat you have ever seen.

It has been warm for two days now, and the farmer thinks we may be able to get our beautiful new (1997!) truck Big Red out of the driveway today or possibly tomorrow at the latest. Our ugly old truck Big Brownie has 4wd but the day before yesterday Big Brownie blew its transmission at the top of the driveway, after serving manfully throughout the entire record-setting snowstorm, so it could be worse, which is one thing we are frankly getting a little bit tired of saying even though it is true.

One of the neighbors thinks BB can be fixed but we are not betting on it and besides Big Brownie is one of the good-riddance things we will be glad to see the end of in 2008.

Here's your hat, Big Brownie, what's your hurry. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.