Well, as you know, the farmer packed up all the kidding supplies last Tuesday, prepared to enjoy a new stress-free life of anytime napping and round-the-clock indolence. This was because all the kidders on the chart had kidded.
So on Saturday night the farmer was planning to go to the movies for the first time in a long time. The chores were done early, including the milking, and everyone was fed. The Fat Girls down in the Fat Girl pasture - dry yearlings and unbred does - were doing their usual complaining, because they had just been switched from alfalfa to grass hay, owing to there now being nice spring grass and the fat girls getting even fatter. A chorus of disapproval had gone up when the grass hay arrived, and the fat girls were doing everything but banging tin cups on the bars of the hay feeder. But they were eating greedily, of course, in spite of their monumental outrage and the fact that they hated and could not possibly stomach grass hay.
In the Fat Girl pasture were my daughter Hannah Belle, Breezy the chief complainer, little knucklehead Bertie the world's largest dry yearling, Willa a nice little mini-Togg, Billie a tough girl, and April's mini-mancha daughter Mabel who carries on her mother's tradition of being crazy as a bedbug (the opposite of her twin Peaches, who is normal as pie).
Of these six tubsters, three had been bred - or sort of bred - and did not settle: Hannah Belle, Breezy, and Mabel. Hannah Belle and Breezy had been bred several times but kept coming back into heat. Mabel, who had always been long and lean, had turned inexplicably into rather a chubby girl, which was surprising because this didn't run in the family. Anyway, she was shopping in the Plus Size rack, so she was assigned to the Fat Girl pasture.
Mabel had been sort of bred: she was put in the breeding stall with little Captain January, who immediately began showering her with teenage goat-boy attentions. This did not put Mabel in a romantic frame of mind. On the contrary, she whirled around like a quarter horse and began attempting to kill the Captain.
The little goat Romeo, by no means a lionheart, was fleeing in circles for his life, screaming at the top of his lungs and occasionally catching a head butt in the ribs when he did not make the corners fast enough. Mabel was whisked out of the stall.
"All right," said the farmer, to Mabel, who was pop-eyed with rage, "we will breed you next year when the Captain is bigger."
Mabel was in the stall with the Captain for perhaps 30 seconds, 27 of which she spent in a homicidal rage.
The other 3, as it turns out, were put to good use.
When it was just time to leave for the movie, an unmistakable bellowing begin to issue from the Fat Girl pasture. The farmer raced down. Breezy had her head planted in the feeder. Hannah Belle the same. From under the cabana came more unmistakable bellowing. The farmer rushed in, just in time to grab a little pink and white bundle.
Yes, you guessed it, Mabel's little daughter. The last - maybe? possibly? - baby of the season.
Good grief.
