If Not For You

What happened was it turned to winter all in one day. The leaves fell off the trees and the rain started pouring down. The sun shut off - click! - just like that. This was very depressing.

Then the next day the farmer came out at dinnertime and called the herd weak-mindedly. "BETSY!"

Everybody looked around. Betsy? Is Betsy here?

The farmer looked grim.

Then Lori came over and Lori trundled about in the usual fashion knocking things over and misplacing things and showering everyone with cookies and candy but looking rather gloomy and in the end Lori said to no one in particular, "you know I can get used to a lot of things but I just can't get used to not seeing Penrose."

The farmer turned away.

One of the farmer's friends arrived in the middle of a downpour and looked at Sky Blue and at me, we were standing next to each other in the pasture. "It's funny," she said absently, "they both look just like Hannah Belle."

"Mmm," said the farmer, and changed the subject.

Well what are you going to do. Are you going to clomp around with your head down pretending Betsy never lived here?  Are you going to never mention Penrose again? Penrose? The patron saint of bummers and orphans? Really?

Are you going to frogmarch into the future as if my mother Hannah Belle possibly the finest or at least the second finest Nigerian Dwarf goat to ever walk the earth NEVER EVEN EXISTED????

Well I will tell you one thing, I am not. I am going to keep on living and remembering my absent friends and relatives and I suggest you do the same because what is the other choice anyway and as far as the winter and the rain and the leaves falling off the trees I am only one and a half years old but I can tell you for a certain fact that it happens every year and you better just GET OVER IT!!!

ALL OF EVERYTHING I JUST TOLD YOU AND PLENTY MORE JUST GET OVER IT!!!!

If not for me this whole place would go to rack and ruin. And the same is true of you. Whoever you are. Wherever you live. So get over it, whatever it is you can't get over. Just get over it.

Table For One

Here is what the herd does every morning, my half of the herd anyway.

It sits around waiting for the farmer to come out.

"Where is the food where is the food where is THE FOOD!" Moldy starts wailing as soon as the sun comes up.

Then the farmer finally comes out and the herd mills and grumbles and shoves against the door so the farmer sometimes practically can't even get the door open to let the herd out.

"I need food where is the food I'M STARVING!" wails Moldy.

"That's my FOOT you're standing on MY FOOT!" screams Winjay.

Wronny t-bones Winjay.

"WHERE IS THE FOOD!" screams Moldy.

"MAMA!" screams Chancy.

"MAMA!" screams Moony.

This wakes Pinky up. "What?" mumbles Pinky. "Is it my birthday again?"

The farmer opens the door and the herd pours out into the front pasture like water pouring out of a giant pitcher, a pitcher full of hungry goats, and then the herd runs back and forth among the three different feed stations, each one seeming to have better food than the others until they see it up close and realize that it is just the same, in fact the previous feed station actually had better food, maybe not better tasting but the presentation was better, there was just something about it, so let's go back there away from Winjay instead of staying here, and there is a great swirling of giant terrestrial four-legged locusts as everyone decides where to eat.

Well that is a little ridiculous so I don't do it.

"Please," I say," after you," and I stand aside as the whole herd goes gurgling out into the pasture and then I walk up to the farmer directly and I indicate with my pleasing demeanor that I wouldn't be against a small bowl of cereal if it isn't too much trouble. Just here in the barn aisle is fine, and I don't mind eating out of the bucket, I don't want to make any trouble. Isn't it a lovely day? My goodness, I love the fall colors.

And then when I have finished eating all I want I indicate to the farmer that I don't mind joining the ordinary goats who are still - some of them anyway - running around screaming in the front pasture.

I'm not saying my way is better. But that's just how I do it.

Not Without My Sister

All the goats that went to the fair caught a cold. Including me. That happens every year.

Moony is sick and also disappointed because she found out she was at a Fair and now she wants to go back.

"The food was much better there."

This is true, at the fair we got free alfalfa and free orchard grass. Not the affordable kind either.

Bumbles' little daughter Crumbles caught the Fair Flu and she has a bad case of sniffles and when everyone got turned out yesterday morning she stayed in for special treatment and bed rest. She slept all day.

About halfway through the day the farmer started running all over looking for Creampuff, Crumbles' twin.

The neighbor's calves tore a hole out of the bottom of our fat girl fence and the farmer was worried that Creampuff had wandered out into the meadow and been eaten by a coyote, since the coyotes are in full howling mode now even though the weather here remains mysteriously perfect and August-like without a drop of rain and not even very cold but that is another story. Anyway no one could find Creampuff.

"I am going to give Crumbles a vitamin B shot and then I am going to go down in the meadow," the farmer announced. And do what? I wondered. But I didn't say anything.

The farmer had forgotten that Creampuff is not a Nubian and she can go wherever she wants, it doesn't matter if there is a gate or a fence in the way. She had snuck back into the barn and was cuddled up with Crumbles, sleeping.

"Oh," said the farmer. "there you are."

Now Creampuff has the sniffles too.