Inky and Shaq

Here they are.

They're Here

Well Hannah Belle underdid herself this time, producing only two kids, both of whom are luckily extremely gorgeous. Since they are fine flashy strapping boys with no apparent physical defects, she already ditched them to go free-ranging in the garden.

When that didn't sit too well with the farmer she went back in with them for a few minutes, looking pious and motherly while the cameras were filming, then re-ditched them to go sit on the cable spools in the horse pasture.

In regards to her previously quadrupletesque figure, she still looks like she could have twins at a moment's notice.

Zero Hour

The farmer has finally had it with Hannah Belle. Hannah Belle is being moved to the kidding stall, like it or not.

And she better like it.

This means the LaMancha weaners, all of whom have been crying hysterically for four days as they adjust to a world without milk, will be plunged into a new reality show called "Outdoor Living."

Or, as I like to think of it, "I'm a LaMancha Baby, Get Me Out of Here!"

It Loved To Happen

Since March it has been believed that my daughter Hannah Belle might kid at any moment. She looks like one of those trucks going down the highway with half of someone’s house on it and an advance car (usually in the form of her chuckleheaded sidekick Miss Melly) leading the way.

Hannah Belle herself has remained calm and not tipped her hand about her plans, enjoying several pre-birthing spa treatments without ever actually having to do any birthing, which can be tiring.

In any case, she was on the chart with a date of June 5 pencilled in, since that was 5 months from the date of her last (of many) breedings.

When people would come over they would say, “oh, Hannah Belle Lecter must be having her babies soon.”

“Yes,” the farmer would say, “possibly.”

“She doesn’t look like she can go much longer.”

“No, not really,” the farmer would say.

And then a day and a week and a month would pass, with Hannah Belle getting larger and no kids appearing. Now it is mid-May, and it appears, like Rachel Alexandra, that she may actually go the distance.

If anything, she is starting to look a little smaller, which is one of the strange things that sometimes happens with Hannah Belle, who almost always has a set of beautiful triplets, except for one time when she had a set of beautiful twins. We have only ever had two sets of quadruplets born here, so we doubt she will have more than three.

We doubt it. We really doubt it. Sort of.

Because when it comes to Hannah Belle, I am proud to say that it pays to expect the unexpected. Or, to quote the famous philosopher Jackson Browne, “don’t think it won’t happen just because it hasn’t happened yet.”

Primates - Go Figure!

Well, the farmer’s precious pet Winnie got very sick. She had milk fever and went down like a stone. She couldn’t walk, because she couldn’t stand up, and the farmer sat around petting her and giving her calcium and Vitamin B and swaddling her in blankets and fetching salal and huckleberry and fresh grass and leaves and all kinds of tempting treats.


I did not get my feet trimmed as had been promised, and Lucy did not get her haircut fixed. Tangy did not do any walking practice – Tangy walks like a swordfish reeled to the surface on a sportfishing tv show, hurling her whole body against the collar and flapping around in mid-air - and the compost pile did not get turned. Domino didn’t get castrated, either, but he didn’t mind.


All because Princess Winnie was sick.


Sometimes I do not understand the workings of the primate mind, because personally I think Winnie is a pain. To me, I say, c’est la vie, if a goat has milk fever and won’t get up to eat, then it doesn’t have much gumption which probably signals weak genes.


I have had milk fever but that is because I had triplets who were very hungry because of their exceptional genetic makeup. Whereas with Winnie, her triplets are perfectly ordinary, and one of them was even a runt, so again we get back to the weak genes, and honestly I don’t understand all the extra effort that could have been better used fixing Lucy’s haircut (looks like it was done with a lawnmower) or castrating Domino the-soon-to-be-wether who really has become a pest with his goatboy ideas.


But this is just one example of how the primate mind works.


Primates can be useful, they have those fingers for picking bugs off you and scratching that part near your withers where you can’t reach, but do not try to figure out what they are thinking. Even if you could do it, you would probably not want to know.


Winnie got better but obviously through no fault of her own weak genes.