The Science Fair

Well the Farmer went around and around and around and the final two name contenders for Pinky are Zedoary - which is a kind of ginger - and the late inning surprise name Zapricot - which is Apricot, with a Z in front of it. So those are the final two choices left from all the many name suggestions.

And if it can't be decided by next Monday we are going to flip a coin. Who cares anyway we are just going to call her Pinky.

Little Pinky is not getting any smarter, either. Even after the head-bashing episode she still runs into things for no apparent reason. Or as the farmer used to say when trying for the umpteenth time to teach Pinky's great-grandmother Stacy to jump on the milkstand, "she is not going to win the Science Fair."

On the other hand my daughter Hannah Belle has finally been able to teach the farmer that she doesn't want her kids in the barn. She was coming up three times a day to feed them but when the farmer had the stall door open for cleaning the other day, Hannah Belle swooped in out of the blue and gave Inky and Shaq the high sign and the whole family skedaddled.

Now everyone is happy and Hannah Belle doesn't have to trudge up to the barn all day long, which was very tiresome for her.

In other news it can now be announced with certainty that both of my other daughters - Belle Pepper and Blue Umbrella - are going to kid in July. These will be the first kids from our new buck, the debonair and handsome but not particularly manly Cowboy.

There was some doubt about whether Cowboy, being just a wide-eyed teenager at the time, had been able to perform his buckly duties last winter. But it appears that the girls were able to educate him. Blue Umbrella in particular is an excellent teacher, like Hannah Belle, even though some of her pupils, as mentioned previously, are not going to win the Science Fair.