The farmer is going to go ahead and start the kidding countdown because it is guesstimated that Betty and Hannah Belle will both kid on Saturday and the farmer is anxious for Hannah Belle's kids to come because Hannah Belle has grown even more incorrigible as she has gotten older and yesterday when she was supposed to be free-ranging in the barnyard she led an assault on the barn instead, freeing all the small and medium-size goats from the middle pasture so that they could join her in storming the alfalfa.
How she did it was by sashaying down the driveway then cramming her miniature battleship body under the bottom fence board near the gate, then sashaying up the pasture to where the middle pasture goats - normally a placid group - were dozing in the sun around the corner and then instigating them to follow her back down to the limbo hole.
"My fellow goats," she usually starts, "please join me in the barn won't you because there is free alfalfa for everybody, the nice kind not that stemmy rubbish. This way please and form a single line."
This of course was not directed at the bears of little brain (Nubian crosses) nor the tall goats (LaMancha), who can't fit under the bottom fenceboard.
Me, Blue, Rosie, Pebbles, Abby, Sandy, Jammies, Bumbles, Sky, and Bluejay all joined the limbo line and within a few minutes the assault was complete. Using combined goat power we snapped the bungy holding the alfalfa gate closed and began feasting on the first bale we saw.
When the alfalfa was almost all gone Hannah Belle said, "thank you so much for coming, I appreciate your help, I must be going now," and she disappeared back into the middle pasture which ought to have been a tip-off and within a few minutes the farmer ran up hollering and making unveiled threats and we all scattered outside, some of us running for the limbo hole and some just running, and as we ran we saw Hannah Belle, perched at the top of the hill and chewing her cud thoughtfully, possibly ruminating about building her own Beowulf Cluster.
