Friday, January 26, 2007

An addition to the menagerie....



Sean is a sucker. That is one of his endearing qualities. He recently was asked to take in four pygmy goats whose family moved to Springfield, Missouri in the middle of the ice storms that paralyzed a diagonal stripe of the show-me state.

They are cute, loud, and very playful. We have a family of four, including a billygoat. They are BillyBob, Angelina (mommy), Brad, and Jennifer. Both kids are girls, but I have a boy cat named Margaret so precendence has been set and one of them can be called "Brad".

Angelina is pretty wide so might already be knocked up again. We might be turning into a goat farm - my father is rolling in his grave.

I always wanted goats. When I was young, I would go with Dad to the sale barn (where he spent most of his time after retirement. Who could blame him? Great chicken fried steak and even better pie) and the workermen in their wranglers and boots would hustle in a a terrified herd of goats. They moved like a school of bleating fish, scrambling from corner to corner of the sale pen while children shrieked and men chuckled. At one auction in Salina, they brought out a big cardboard box that was sold as a mystery box. Inside was a baby goat, but we only found out after some sucker bought the box for $17. Dad scoffed at me and my obsession with goats. There was "no way were were going to be goat-ropers" he would say. Goats were silly, uncouth, useless in his world of team roping and cattle ranching.

Then Dad retired. He found himself spending every weekend from Spring to Fall running rodeos all across central and eastern Kansas for kids. Little Britches had mostly become defunct, so Dad and a buddy started a new circuit of rodeos to prepare kids for the high school rodeo competitions that would earn most of those kids college scholarships to go to Pratt CCC, Dodge City CCC, Ft. Hays State, and K-State if they were really good (those kids comprised about a third of the people at his funeral). Goat tying is an event at these kids rodeos, which meant that someone had to own goats and transport the goats to every rodeo. You also had to have enough goat stock that you could rotate goats in and out so that they didn't get too used to being caught and tied. Nothing takes the fun out of competition like a tame goat that waits for you to catch it and then lays down so you can tie its legs together. Dad began collecting goats. He caught a lot of guff at the sale barn from his ranching brethren who wondered what had become of the macho John who would never let goats on his property. He had to buy sheep too for mutton busting, a precursor to bull riding. The sheep were not fun, being naturally dumb creatures, but the goats would scamper about a dry lot while the horses nosed over the fence to see why such commotion was being raised. When Dad thought no one was looking, he would get in their pen and play with them, gently stroking their fat bellies and rubbing their heads. They would instinctively butt their heads into his tree trunk of a leg, stand on their back legs in an effort to climb his 6' 3" frame, and bleat their thanks for saving them from an end as live sacrifice or cabrito verde. My Dad was a sucker, too.
posted by Rosie @ 1/26/2007 08:05:00 AM

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