Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Grass Babies

Winnie is very sensible and cooperative and an excellent mother and a professional dairy goat anyone can milk. She is known for it. Her daughter Winjay is the opposite. Winjay's mind is a superstore of bad ideas. Aisle upon aisle of harebrained schemes and crackpot notions.

Today it came time for Winjay to have her kids. What did she do? Did she go up to the barn where there was a nice roomy clean private kidding stall waiting for her?

No. She went down to the old ramshackle cabana which is going to be demolished soon if it doesn't fall down by itself first which it is doing in stages. In addition to being so ramshackle that it would be considered ridiculously overdone if it were used on tv as an example of a decrepit goat shed, the cabana has been slowly filling up with goat berries over the last ten years and by now there are billions of them under the main floor, because everyone likes to lie on the main floor up off the ground and the berries fall through the slats. Overall it is an excellent system.

But Winjay did not go on the main floor which is what you are supposed to do. She crawled and wiggled and wormed her way underneath the floor so that she was lying on a carpet of vintage goat berries to have her kids.  The farmer came down and tried to wrassle her out but she wouldn't budge.

So the farmer went and got some towels and caught the kids as they came out and put them in the middle of the down-below pasture in the bright sun to dry and then came back to try to drag Winjay out but it was no dice. Penrose happened along and saw the kids lying in the grass and she thought they were hers and she started cleaning them and fixing their hair and she showed one of them how to stand up and meanwhile the farmer tugged on Winjay's leg but she has a mysterious superpower of turning herself into a 3,000 pound concrete block when she feels like it so forget about that.

The farmer came back and by this time the kids were dry and Penrose was explaining to them that the milk comes from the udder and not the knee and if they would move towards the back she could assist them in filling their stomachs but just then the farmer picked them up and took them to the barn, jostling them around so that they would scream.

"Winjay will follow us when she hears them screaming," the farmer told Wendell, who was performing his supernanny functions. Wendell goggled his eyes in disbelief.

Winjay did not follow at all, she continued reclining in her sumptuous berry patch. Instead, Penrose trotted along solicitously. "There is a milk tap on each side," she was explaining to the babies, "so you will both be able to drink at the same time. Now just hop down here and I will show you how it's done."

"No Penrose," said the farmer. "You do not have enough milk for these babies. These are LaMancha piranhas, they will suck you dry."

The farmer went into the barn and shut the gate on Penrose. Penrose stood there for a minute thinking, then turned and ran back down to the cabana where she spent the rest of the morning combing through the long grass looking for more babies.

It's dark now so I can't see but she is probably still out there. Good luck, Penrose. Hope you find some more Grass Babies.