What happened was there was a giant snowstorm followed by a mild windstorm followed by a deluge of rain, followed by a large windstorm. Telephone poles and trees came crashing down. The farmer went to California and we had a farmsitter.
Sky Blue got something stuck in her throat and puzzled the farmsitter by hacking and choking to such an alarming degree that the farmsitter called the farmer in California.
"I hate to mention it," the farmsitter said, "but one of the little goats has suddenly gotten very sick and can't stop coughing."
"One of the little goats?" the farmer said suspiciously. "which one? is it Pebbles?"
"I think it is," the farmsitter opined vaguely, because the farmsitter can't really tell Nigerians apart.
"Text me a picture right away," barked the farmer, even though the farmer is a devout Luddite. The farmsitter texted the picture all the way to California and it was a picture of Sky Blue and the farmer responded breezily, "she will be fine," which was in fact exactly what happened within about a half hour since Sky Blue is such a pig that she gobbles everything in sight and after she stopped choking her dry cob she went to sleep just like a cat in a puddle of light on a windowsill.
Then the next day the farmer came home and surveyed the knee-deep mud in the barnyard and the overflowing Lost Beaver Lake and the bedraggled ponies with their belly straps undone for the 80 millionth time and the fir branches blown every which way and the farmer walked back to the house muttering.
"California."
