Expertise

The very least of the rolling disaster that was our spring and summer, 2023, was the escape of Sneaky Fucker from the designated Pasture of Testicles, his breach of several layers of both woven wire and electrically-charged security, and the subsequent impregnation of the Wrong Goats at the Wrong Time by the Wrong Guy.

But here we are, trying to keep 2# kids alive in the middle of winter. And here the Nigerian does are, doing their goat kegels to keep those tailhead ligaments nice and tight every day until I have checked them and walked away, at which point they skulk off and look for a nice ice crevasse or maybe a lava pit where they can give birth and then immediately forget what they were doing and go out for sushi with their friends.

On Tuesday it was We Broke the Planet warm, dry, sunny. Nobody was birthin’ no babies, they swore. The lambs were romping, the ewes and does were sunbathing.

At hay time and last pasture check, the black clouds were starting to roll in.

And this absolute ding-dong comes shuffling down from the rise in the big pasture with a tiny strawberry blond babby alongside.

Mug shot vibe? So be it.

Huh.

Picked up the little buckling and reached for his normally — well, compliant is not a word generally applied to goats, but at least tame — mother.

She decided to play wyld gôte,  Absolutely not, she was not going to cooperate in the project of going into a safe warm dry stall with a heat plate for her child, with all the hay and alfalfa pellets and grain she could nom.

So we played greased pig for 25 minutes with her kid stuffed into my shirt, and boy those clouds were ominous and wind was picking up.

Another 15 to get a stall freed up and the two of them installed, and now the rain was starting and the temperature was dropping.

I did a circuit of the 8 acre pasture and decided everyone was accounted for,

Then I decided I had better be sure and that rain was coming nasty now.

Went into the house to get a raincoat and an expert.

Sammie looked outside and told me to go to Hell Kemosabi.

“Sam, I need your help.”

Oh, if you put it that way.

She levitated and started chortling, because I’m your dog, so what is it we are doing in this now sideways rain and fuck is this hail?

She’d seen and smelled the doe, Cait, and the wee buckling, when I brought them out.

She is all about context.

As I started on the perimeter of the pasture fence near where I had first seen the two, she started casting into the wind, then shot straight and started examining the ground about 20 meters away.

I caught up with her, and there was the placenta. A favorite dog treat here, but she had no interest in eating it; it was more data for the mysterious logic engine under her skull.

What the placenta told her was that not everyone was accounted for. It smelled of Cait, and of the buckling, and also someone else. But I didn’t understand that yet. Just that she was insistent that we keep going.

Don’t bring in an expert and then disregard what they tell you.

It was getting pretty dark.

She started casting really aggressively now. I walked the perimeter to get all the way downwind and then we turned to work into it. The hail was driving into the elderly rain jacket I had grabbed. Was that lightning? Is the middle of a hilltop field next to a long high-tensile fence the ideal place to be?

I still didn’t really believe in another kid. I expected to perhaps find another spot in the pasture with birth slime.

Sam looked so pretty, searching into that squall, that I pulled my phone out to record her pattern of low casting, get some video of how she worked in unreasonable conditions, and just as I looked up:

 I’m not crying you’re crying.

For our troubles, we got accusatory huffing from The Ding-Dong. How very dare we maliciously snatch her darling daughter from her? If that’s not what happened, then how is that we had her? What were we implying about her famously excellent maternal qualities? She knew exactly where she had put the child!

I wasn’t about to leave that stall until I saw Baby Girl get a nice drink of fresh bewb juice, and Cait was still indignant and pissy. Maybe she would just dance and kick a little when the prodigal tried to nurse?

Maybe I have no compunction about cold-cocking a goat?

Oh, you didn’t explain it like that before.

Baby got her bewbie.