Sorry for being late this week.  You would think that being retired meant a lot of free time but I’ve spent the last three days cutting a huge hole in the back of my nieces house and installing a patio door.  Lifting the gas powered concrete saw over my head to cut the brick was a little painful and I’m feeling it today!

I promised goats so you’re getting goats.

So my dad traded in the nasty male goat for a much mellower little female.  She happily munched on the lawn for many years but she still had some personality.  I remember the day we came home and found Peg standing on the roof of one of dad’s old Studebakers while the goat, who had somehow worked her way off the chain, circled the car menacingly.  The goat wouldn’t hurt a flea and just wanted a scratch on the head but Peg didn’t know that and she spent half an hour up there waiting for someone to rescue her.

The sad thing about any pet is that they eventually die, and usually not at a very convenient time.  I think that first female died on Christmas day the winter after my, not so brilliant, cousins fed her a Styrofoam cup.  Luckily I was on active duty and couldn’t get leave that year so my brother Tim and dad ended up digging a grave by hand through the frozen ground to bury her.  As the story goes, she died standing up and when they went out to feed her in the morning, there she was like a furry statue, frozen solid.  After hours of digging they dropped her into the shallow grave but her legs were sticking straight up and when they tried to fold them down so they wouldn’t stick out of the ground, they just snapped off.  Good times!

The next goat, another female was an African Nubian.  It wasn’t very big, but it enjoyed butting children, only children.  I think it was smart enough realize that adults were big enough not to be pushed around but kids could be bullied a little.  If I remember correctly, it was the only one that didn’t die of natural causes. It’s knees eventually failed and one morning it couldn’t stand up.  Dad had to “execute” the 2 cent plan (cost of a .22 round) and put her down.  Luckily I was out of town so I again escaped the grave digging.

After that one, my dad decided that goats where more trouble than they were worth and, honestly, I think putting it down was painful for him and he didn’t want to have to do that again.  So we shoveled the last of the goat poop out of the stall, fertilized the vegetable garden and that was it.  At least he thought it was.  That was the summer my sister Kelly got married.  She and Brian went off on their honeymoon and the day they got home, she called and asked if I still had my dog kennel and if so, could she borrow it.  I told her that I did, and she could, but why?  She proceeded to excitedly tell me how they had seen the cutest little goats at a farm they had visited (fun honeymoon!) and that they had bought one for dad and were going to surprise him with it the next day.  Oh well, who was I to pee on their parade so I lent them my kennel and waited to see how dad would react.  I guess Tim got some of his acting abilities from my dad because he did a pretty good job of feigning excitement when they rolled up to the house with the bleating baby (or would the alliteration “kicking kid” be better?).  He made me promise not to tell Kelly, a promise I just broke.  Well, since I’m on a roll breaking promises I made to my dad, “Mom, dad and I saw a huge black snake in the gutter of Uncle George’s house and we watched as it crawled through the soffit into the attic!”  I think that’s the last of the them.  So, that last goat lived longer than all of the others.  In keeping with the holiday theme, it died on Labor Day during a family picnic.  Some families play volleyball, throw Frisbees, and pitch horseshoes.  We dig graves!