~~~ Lifeboats Part 2 ~~~
The next morning the farmer comes out and starts feeding. The farmer notices that Binky is opening her mouth and doing the donkey bray of alarm. Only no sound is coming out. She is too hoarse.
"That's odd," says the farmer.
"Peep," screams Binky, sounding like a distant mouse.
Binky has a bag of milk the size of Rhode Island.
"That's odd," says the farmer.
"Peep," Binky mute-bellows.
Finally a glimmer goes on in the farmer's eyes. The farmer trots over and looks under the porch and can't see anything. The farmer gets the tractor and turns the tractor lights on and aims them under the porch. The farmer can't see anything. The farmer gets down and wiggles a few feet under the porch and re-adjusts the tractor lights and off in a distant dark completely inaccessible under-porch area sees a faint glimmer of one of Binky's babies - the pale sundgau stripe on one of his black cheeks.
Binky is on the loose now and running all around the porch silent-screaming. Occasionally she gets a faint heroic peep out.
The farmer calls the babies. Nothing. The farmer puzzles. The farmer gets on top of the porch and looks down through the floorboards and is able to locate the baby spot, just beside the workbench where the farmer has been cutting boards for the new fence gates. The farmer gets the air compressor and points the nozzle through the crack in the floorboards, about a quarter inch wide. The farmer turns the compressor on, blowing air on the babies. The purpose of this idea remains mysterious; in any case the babies don't move.
"Hmm," says the farmer.
The farmer tries a couple of other bad ideas. Then the farmer gets a good idea. The farmer picks up the phone and calls the neighbor, a mechanical genius.
Within a few minutes the neighbor has arrived and fashioned a ten foot long baby goat fishing pole out of pvc pipe, some bolts, and a foot long metal hook designed for holding hoses. The neighbor crawls a few feet under the porch, deploys the fishing pole skillfully, hooks the sundgau baby, and pulls him out, inch by inch.
The baby emerges, blinking, covered with dirt, spider webs, and sawdust blown down on him through the porch floorboards by the air compressor.
"I wonder how he got all that sawdust on him," says the neighbor.
"That's strange, isn't it," says the farmer.
While the first baby is drinking a gallon of milk the second baby comes out on her own.
For no reason at all Binky gazes at the farmer with admiration as the two babies empty her bag of milk in record time.
