Feathering the empty nest with chickens.
Showing posts with label midlife crises. Show all posts
Showing posts with label midlife crises. Show all posts
Monday, March 30, 2009
Chicken west side story (a chicken ballet)
The scene opens panning over trees, grass, across a pond surface, up a slope and in the distance we hear a rooster crow! A short hesitation and there is an answering crow. It's early morning, the sun hasn't even peeked over the horizon and the rooster crows again, followed by a quick response. It's early morning in the chicken yard. Dew glistens on the wire fencing. Across one coop, in chicken, is sprayed the word "JETS", across another... "SHARKS". And a rooster crows.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Chickens!
July 2, 2007
It began as a simple quest to acquire four hens to offset the cost of eggs, which in our neck of the woods range from about $2.50 a dozen. I hear squawking, and it’s not from the hen yard. Yes, eggs are outrageous up here in the country, so we took advantage of our agricultural land and got chickens. And what an adventure that was. My husband, Gary, had been working on building a chicken coop for a few weeks with the intent to raise chickens. About a month ago the coop, a fully self-contained (I’m talking solid wood construction and not on the ground) coop with shelves and nesting boxes, and a screened window, was finished. It was our goal to have the birds wander the yard by day, sleep in the hen house at night.
Next step was to purchase/get the birds. We went to the feed store in town and after a lengthy discussion with the locals on the best way to raise chickens was directed to a man who worked in the store whose wife was giving chicks away. Free chickens? It beat paying $2 and $3 per chick. We jumped on the opportunity. The chickens, we were told, were ‘straight run’. For us city folks that means they didn’t turn them upside down, lift up their feathers, and check to see if a little boy woo-woo popped out. We didn’t want little boys, but we figured we could weed them out later.
We arrived at the ranch that had the free chickens only to see the critters everywhere. Somebody had exploded a great egg bomb of chickens and they were all over the yard with little ones running right behind the Moms and chickens could be heard clucking loudly in a hen houses, under houses, in the bushes, around the bushes, amid the crowing of several roosters. It sounded like a factory and it was producing chickens. Bantams were mixed with Orpingtons, which were mixed with little black and yellow ones, and oh my gosh, chicken disaster! No wonder the lady was giving them away!
Gary went to the door of the house and out walked this woman who was in her early forties, I’m guessing, wearing a little chauffer type cap, short shorts, a tank top, bright blonde hair (dare I say encouraged by a bottle?) and muck boots that gave her the appearance of being a biker babe. Gary explained who he was and she gleefully told us that a mother hen had been walking by right after her husband called and she ran outside and rounded up all the chicks she could get her hands on. We clarified that we just wanted four hens for egg laying purposes and she shook her head and said she had thirteen chicks that took her all morning to capture and by gosh we were going to take them. If we wanted their moms she would happily round them up and give them to us too. Nervously we rejected the offer of the mothers and went to inspect the chicks. Sure enough, in a large dog carrier were thirteen squawking, chirping, little birds and she quickly got down and started handing them to us to put into our small cat carrier to bring home. In the melee that ensued, with her handing and my husband grabbing and stuffing, two birds got loose and rather than go after them, (we were assured they would find their way back to their mom) we took the other eleven home with us after graciously turning down her offer to get the mothers. We thanked her and quickly left the chicken ranch heaving a sigh of relief as we escaped.
I know what you’re thinking. But, Mary, I thought you only wanted four!
The way I look at it, I expected to lose some chickens to our stupidity because we’re city folks who have never raised chickens. If we got four, we’d probably accidentally kill one, or one would get sick, or the dogs would eat one, or a raccoon would get to them or coyotes would tear apart the coop, you get the picture. I have seven contingency chickens. In the event we lose a few we have some to spare. But are they all hens? Darn good question. Gary tried turning them upside down and couldn’t get a woo-hoo to show, so we think they’re all hens. Eleven hens. If they survive we’re looking at a dozen eggs a day because chickens will lay an egg a day…I’m going to need more cholesterol medicine.
On the other hand, if some of them are cocklings (baby roosters) then we’re going to be having chicken soup soon. Okay, okay, Gary will be giving chickens away soon…probably to people who will in turn make chicken soup. I’d rather have the chicken soup, but I just know we’re going to get attached to the stupid things.
July 4, 2007
Well we decided to let the chickens out of the coop to get to know their new habitat and explore their run. I didn’t know about it because I was sleeping in, but who could sleep with little birds chirping madly. I had dogs whining outside the bedroom door, chickens chirping outside and I threw in the towel and got up and dressed. When I put my German Shepherd outside, not knowing where my husband and son were (she’s the loudest whiner), she must have been quickly shoved back in the door because as I went into the bathroom to get dressed she appeared in the bathroom doorway. She had sought me out and whined again. Perplexed we looked at each other and I went to the front door to see my son walking down the driveway with a fishing net in one hand. It kind of looked like he was butterfly hunting but I knew the netting was too large.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Keep the dogs inside, the chickens got out.”
This is where I, being the mom, got to do that eye roll thing you always hear about moms doing.
“Dad got six back in the coop but five are still on the loose.” He informed me, his father coming up the drive with a similar fishing net in hand.
“How’d they get out?” I asked.
“They went under the fence.”
They later explained that our efforts to fence in an area for the birds that was screened over the top and big enough for eleven birds to wander around in left one thing out. We didn’t know they could dig! Oh sure, the country folk call it scratching. Those little twits ran around the run, found a gap between the ground and the bottom of the fence and like parochial school children lined up in an orderly fashion and played follow the leader right out of the run.
My shepherd is good at going under our fences. She could actually jump them because they’re short enough, but she prefers to dig. I eyed her indignantly. She looked guiltily back as I thought she and the birds must’ve been talking.
And so the great 4th of July chicken roundup on our Chicken Ranch ensued.
We had volunteered to drive our 1953 Chevy show truck in the 4th of July parade in the local town and had to be at the meeting point by 9:30 am. We locked the dogs up in the house and left to make our rendezvous. Meanwhile our son, had plans to go down to his work at the airport where a BBQ was to be prepared with his hangar buddies. After fulfilling our obligations in the parade and returning the truck back to the garage, Gary made one more effort to round up the birds before joining Steve at the airport. I reminded Gary as he debated leaving that these were the "contingency fowl" and shooed him to the airport (it was expected to be over 100 degrees and the guys were going to hang out on a black topped tarmac and the hangars are not air conditioned, why are you even asking why I didn’t go?)
During the baking afternoon I didn’t worry about the chicks because they had water piped into the coop and the windows and rafters were open to air. If anything, the chicks might sweat, but they’d be okay. The ones wandering around could always access the dog pool for water (Ewww!) And besides they had to learn that food was in the coop, not outside of the coop. I didn’t worry about them.
Anticipating an evening at the neighbor’s house lighting fireworks, (do not ask me why the tinderbox of the Sierra allows fireworks when the Bay Area poo-poos the idea because of fire concerns) the boys arrived home hot and exhausted. (There was no air conditioning and they’d spent the day on the hot tarmac, why do I repeat myself?). Gary tried once more to round up the birds and called out our bird dog, Kelly, a Labrador. Kelly sniffed around and located three of the birds under the deck (near the dog pool) and the hunt was on again. Out came 3 fishing nets, and little chickens went scurrying and flying about the yard. Three more birds were wrestled back into the coop leaving two little ones on the loose. We focused on one bird at a time. By 9:00pm we gave up on the remaining two birds that had roosted for the night in the thick cover of oaks and scrub on the property. I don’t think they knew that the local buzzard population and a hoot owl were also known to roost in those same trees. Dumb birds. I reminded Gary again that they were contingency fowl and we went next door to watch fireworks.
It wasn’t until the next morning that we caught the second to the last bird and that evening that the final chicken was rounded up. Meanwhile a great rock foundation was built around the base of the chicken run. Mishka, our shepherd, likes to move rocks, I was hoping the chickens weren’t learning any more tricks from her.
July 6, 2007
We noticed the pecking order truly at work. A little yellow chicken had been ostracized from the group. It didn’t socialize with the rest of them and seemed to do everything it could to stay out of their way. That night as the chickens were settling to roost Gary took a head count and noticed a chick missing. He had shooed a buzzard away from the chicken run (the buzzard could look but would have to do some serious pecking to get at the chickens in the run the way it’s screened up). Out in the pen in a rocky clump Gary saw the missing chicken with its head buried in the rocks and its feet sticking up. Kind of like the way the kids would dump a small kid in a trash can. The chickens had chased and pecked this little bird to motivate him to get out or be killed. Gary rescued the distressed bird and moved it to the cat carrier where it could be away from the flock (which I later found out is called a “clutch”). Poor little chicken. We still have no idea if he is a he or a she. But our information says we now have to pay more attention to it because it is flockless…That is how we got a pet chicken.
Tresa the flockless, our neighbor called her. Isabella, was another name given. Izzy (Is-He) is what I call it until we know if it’s a he? Or a she? The name will probably not stick, especially if she starts crowing. Then his name is Dinner. Okay, you whiners. We’ll give him away. And someone else can call him dinner.
It began as a simple quest to acquire four hens to offset the cost of eggs, which in our neck of the woods range from about $2.50 a dozen. I hear squawking, and it’s not from the hen yard. Yes, eggs are outrageous up here in the country, so we took advantage of our agricultural land and got chickens. And what an adventure that was. My husband, Gary, had been working on building a chicken coop for a few weeks with the intent to raise chickens. About a month ago the coop, a fully self-contained (I’m talking solid wood construction and not on the ground) coop with shelves and nesting boxes, and a screened window, was finished. It was our goal to have the birds wander the yard by day, sleep in the hen house at night.
Next step was to purchase/get the birds. We went to the feed store in town and after a lengthy discussion with the locals on the best way to raise chickens was directed to a man who worked in the store whose wife was giving chicks away. Free chickens? It beat paying $2 and $3 per chick. We jumped on the opportunity. The chickens, we were told, were ‘straight run’. For us city folks that means they didn’t turn them upside down, lift up their feathers, and check to see if a little boy woo-woo popped out. We didn’t want little boys, but we figured we could weed them out later.
We arrived at the ranch that had the free chickens only to see the critters everywhere. Somebody had exploded a great egg bomb of chickens and they were all over the yard with little ones running right behind the Moms and chickens could be heard clucking loudly in a hen houses, under houses, in the bushes, around the bushes, amid the crowing of several roosters. It sounded like a factory and it was producing chickens. Bantams were mixed with Orpingtons, which were mixed with little black and yellow ones, and oh my gosh, chicken disaster! No wonder the lady was giving them away!
Gary went to the door of the house and out walked this woman who was in her early forties, I’m guessing, wearing a little chauffer type cap, short shorts, a tank top, bright blonde hair (dare I say encouraged by a bottle?) and muck boots that gave her the appearance of being a biker babe. Gary explained who he was and she gleefully told us that a mother hen had been walking by right after her husband called and she ran outside and rounded up all the chicks she could get her hands on. We clarified that we just wanted four hens for egg laying purposes and she shook her head and said she had thirteen chicks that took her all morning to capture and by gosh we were going to take them. If we wanted their moms she would happily round them up and give them to us too. Nervously we rejected the offer of the mothers and went to inspect the chicks. Sure enough, in a large dog carrier were thirteen squawking, chirping, little birds and she quickly got down and started handing them to us to put into our small cat carrier to bring home. In the melee that ensued, with her handing and my husband grabbing and stuffing, two birds got loose and rather than go after them, (we were assured they would find their way back to their mom) we took the other eleven home with us after graciously turning down her offer to get the mothers. We thanked her and quickly left the chicken ranch heaving a sigh of relief as we escaped.
I know what you’re thinking. But, Mary, I thought you only wanted four!
The way I look at it, I expected to lose some chickens to our stupidity because we’re city folks who have never raised chickens. If we got four, we’d probably accidentally kill one, or one would get sick, or the dogs would eat one, or a raccoon would get to them or coyotes would tear apart the coop, you get the picture. I have seven contingency chickens. In the event we lose a few we have some to spare. But are they all hens? Darn good question. Gary tried turning them upside down and couldn’t get a woo-hoo to show, so we think they’re all hens. Eleven hens. If they survive we’re looking at a dozen eggs a day because chickens will lay an egg a day…I’m going to need more cholesterol medicine.
On the other hand, if some of them are cocklings (baby roosters) then we’re going to be having chicken soup soon. Okay, okay, Gary will be giving chickens away soon…probably to people who will in turn make chicken soup. I’d rather have the chicken soup, but I just know we’re going to get attached to the stupid things.
July 4, 2007
Well we decided to let the chickens out of the coop to get to know their new habitat and explore their run. I didn’t know about it because I was sleeping in, but who could sleep with little birds chirping madly. I had dogs whining outside the bedroom door, chickens chirping outside and I threw in the towel and got up and dressed. When I put my German Shepherd outside, not knowing where my husband and son were (she’s the loudest whiner), she must have been quickly shoved back in the door because as I went into the bathroom to get dressed she appeared in the bathroom doorway. She had sought me out and whined again. Perplexed we looked at each other and I went to the front door to see my son walking down the driveway with a fishing net in one hand. It kind of looked like he was butterfly hunting but I knew the netting was too large.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Keep the dogs inside, the chickens got out.”
This is where I, being the mom, got to do that eye roll thing you always hear about moms doing.
“Dad got six back in the coop but five are still on the loose.” He informed me, his father coming up the drive with a similar fishing net in hand.
“How’d they get out?” I asked.
“They went under the fence.”
They later explained that our efforts to fence in an area for the birds that was screened over the top and big enough for eleven birds to wander around in left one thing out. We didn’t know they could dig! Oh sure, the country folk call it scratching. Those little twits ran around the run, found a gap between the ground and the bottom of the fence and like parochial school children lined up in an orderly fashion and played follow the leader right out of the run.
My shepherd is good at going under our fences. She could actually jump them because they’re short enough, but she prefers to dig. I eyed her indignantly. She looked guiltily back as I thought she and the birds must’ve been talking.
And so the great 4th of July chicken roundup on our Chicken Ranch ensued.
We had volunteered to drive our 1953 Chevy show truck in the 4th of July parade in the local town and had to be at the meeting point by 9:30 am. We locked the dogs up in the house and left to make our rendezvous. Meanwhile our son, had plans to go down to his work at the airport where a BBQ was to be prepared with his hangar buddies. After fulfilling our obligations in the parade and returning the truck back to the garage, Gary made one more effort to round up the birds before joining Steve at the airport. I reminded Gary as he debated leaving that these were the "contingency fowl" and shooed him to the airport (it was expected to be over 100 degrees and the guys were going to hang out on a black topped tarmac and the hangars are not air conditioned, why are you even asking why I didn’t go?)
During the baking afternoon I didn’t worry about the chicks because they had water piped into the coop and the windows and rafters were open to air. If anything, the chicks might sweat, but they’d be okay. The ones wandering around could always access the dog pool for water (Ewww!) And besides they had to learn that food was in the coop, not outside of the coop. I didn’t worry about them.
Anticipating an evening at the neighbor’s house lighting fireworks, (do not ask me why the tinderbox of the Sierra allows fireworks when the Bay Area poo-poos the idea because of fire concerns) the boys arrived home hot and exhausted. (There was no air conditioning and they’d spent the day on the hot tarmac, why do I repeat myself?). Gary tried once more to round up the birds and called out our bird dog, Kelly, a Labrador. Kelly sniffed around and located three of the birds under the deck (near the dog pool) and the hunt was on again. Out came 3 fishing nets, and little chickens went scurrying and flying about the yard. Three more birds were wrestled back into the coop leaving two little ones on the loose. We focused on one bird at a time. By 9:00pm we gave up on the remaining two birds that had roosted for the night in the thick cover of oaks and scrub on the property. I don’t think they knew that the local buzzard population and a hoot owl were also known to roost in those same trees. Dumb birds. I reminded Gary again that they were contingency fowl and we went next door to watch fireworks.
It wasn’t until the next morning that we caught the second to the last bird and that evening that the final chicken was rounded up. Meanwhile a great rock foundation was built around the base of the chicken run. Mishka, our shepherd, likes to move rocks, I was hoping the chickens weren’t learning any more tricks from her.
July 6, 2007
We noticed the pecking order truly at work. A little yellow chicken had been ostracized from the group. It didn’t socialize with the rest of them and seemed to do everything it could to stay out of their way. That night as the chickens were settling to roost Gary took a head count and noticed a chick missing. He had shooed a buzzard away from the chicken run (the buzzard could look but would have to do some serious pecking to get at the chickens in the run the way it’s screened up). Out in the pen in a rocky clump Gary saw the missing chicken with its head buried in the rocks and its feet sticking up. Kind of like the way the kids would dump a small kid in a trash can. The chickens had chased and pecked this little bird to motivate him to get out or be killed. Gary rescued the distressed bird and moved it to the cat carrier where it could be away from the flock (which I later found out is called a “clutch”). Poor little chicken. We still have no idea if he is a he or a she. But our information says we now have to pay more attention to it because it is flockless…That is how we got a pet chicken.
Tresa the flockless, our neighbor called her. Isabella, was another name given. Izzy (Is-He) is what I call it until we know if it’s a he? Or a she? The name will probably not stick, especially if she starts crowing. Then his name is Dinner. Okay, you whiners. We’ll give him away. And someone else can call him dinner.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Billy
Misadventures in the Country
Billy
Since we live on three-plus untamed, weed-cluttered acres it has always been in the back of our mind to get a goat to do some of the simpler weed eating. An opportunity arose to try out a goat when someone, I hesitate to call a friend, offered us the use of his Boer goat. This would be great, we thought. All of our weed eating would be taken care of for the mere cost of a salt lick and bale of alfalfa (it seems they need a bonus for eating weeds). I couldn’t wait to watch him in action. I did mention he was a he? Billy’s his name, as in Billy Goat. (His owner’s choice not mine).
My first full day home with Billy was spent without my husband and son (the boys) around. Being car guys there was a car event that they had planned to attend and so I awoke to the baleful bleating of the goat. Being a city girl I assume all barnyard animals to be like dogs…or cats and his bleating was A) a request for attention, B) a request for food or water, or C) a request for freedom. I chose a combination of A and B wanting to offer food and attention to the lonely little guy. I went to the store and bought the smallest bag of goat grain (a 50# sack), rented a movie (it was my day off), and bought a cup of coffee (Mocha Latte at the gas station, we didn’t have a Starbucks and the gas station mochas are pretty good!). My intent was to go home, drink my coffee make friends with Billy, and then watch my movie.
When I arrived home, I checked the yard for Billy and didn’t see him immediately. I figured he was exploring the brush filled property and the grazing opportunities and I simply couldn’t see him behind my overgrown, weed-cluttered bushes. Going back to my coffee I proceeded to plan out my day deciding whether to watch the movie now or wait until later, get the goat food out of my car or open the bag in the trunk (I wasn’t seriously considering that option). It was half way through that cup that I received a telephone call from my next-door neighbor, Sean. Sean is a very likable character that like me can have a prolific vocabulary and loves to hear himself talk…loudly, okay that part’s not like me.
“Suzy!” he boomed through my phone receiver, “is that Billy up on the hill?”
My house is situated on the top of a hill thinking he meant mine jokingly responded, “Probably.” But there are other hills around me, higher hills. “Which hill are we talking about?”
“I’m looking up the hill where that Spanish looking hotel is.” He said referring to a neighbor’s house across the street from me and up a steep slope. “Do you see the house up there above it? Then the other house to the right?” To my vague uh-huhs (I was still in the kitchen, no where near the view he was directing me) but he continued, “See the outcropping of rocks and the white dog looking animal?”
I finally made it out to my front yard and was scoping the ridgeline above my neighbor’s house trying to find the houses he had referred to. Still not seeing the animal in question I said “uh-huh”.
“Isn’t that Billy?”
“Uh-oh.”
My neighbor had sent his two kids and a visiting friend up the hill and I saw their car weaving along the slope road to a house at the end of the ridge where a precipice of rock outcroppings were capped by a white furry animal. Out of the car they poured scrambling over the rocks with cries of “Billy, here Billy.”
In dismay I ran to my back deck and looked out over my vacant yard. “Uh-oh,” I repeated.
I could hear my neighbor’s booming laughter as he watched his kids try to wrangle the goat. “I think he’s happy up there.” He commented.
Hanging up with Sean I ran out and watched the kids try to work with the goat and wondered why I thought having a goat was such a great idea.
In a panic I called my son at his car show an hour away and when he answered told him that ‘the goat’ got out and was up the hill from us. He asked why these things always happened when he and my husband were gone from the house, and then explained there was nothing they could do, they were an hour away. I told him that Sean’s kids were trying to round him up and he agreed they’d probably get him better than I could. I hung up and scrambled to find rope and remembered the grain in the back of my car. I hauled the bag out of the trunk and attempted to open it without spilling the contents all over the driveway. I grabbed a Tupperware container and put a handful of grain in there, looked up the hill and watched as Billy jumped to a higher rock, tail wagging with kids yelling and coaxing right behind. I added more grain to the container.
Jumping in my car I drove down the road a short distance to where the entrance to the long sloped driveway was and began the foreign-to-me drive up this winding one lane road not appreciating the houses that toggled off to the side and avoiding the cliff like view of the houses below. Finally I arrived at the top where the kids had parked their car, grabbed my Tupperware full of grain and offered it to them.
They had in the meantime chased Billy down from his rocky precipice and were herding him back down the hillside to my house, or at least that was the general direction. I noted that he was in a fenced off yard that had an access road back down the driveway. I hopped in my car, got turned around and headed back down hoping to head off the wandering goat.
Just as I reached the access drive I ran into Sean who was now aboard his riding lawn mower (with wagon in tow) and heading up the ridgeline drive to us. Spotting the goat now escaping the fenced yard and running down the ridgeline driveway he turned his mower around and yelling at the goat started driving back down the driveway. Because it was a one way drive, all I could see was the backside of Billie trotting down the road in front of Sean who was cruising at full lawn mower speed and twirling a rope in his hands like a drunken cowboy yelling “yee-hah!” I was stuck behind his weaving tractor wondering how I was going to catch this animal and trying to avoid hitting my slower paced, lawnmower-driving neighbor.
At one point along the ridge road Billy feinted to the right and started towards an open field as my neighbor hopped off his lawn mower and began tying the rope to a pole. Meanwhile his mower rolled unmanned a little further down the road into a ditch. With a smile he turned to coax Billy to come to him so that he could throw the other end of the rope on him. Billy wasn’t having that and bolted again down the driveway to the entrance where he crossed the street and entered yet another neighbor’s yard. By that time I had pulled over, offered Sean the grain (which I had been assured by Billy’s owner was like candy to him) and watched with increasing horror as the goat bolted away through the neighbor’s yard.
Sean ran after him with another rope and yelled to the neighbors, who happened to be out putting up a fence, “Stop that goat! Don’t let him get away!”
Yeah, right. I watched from the curb not certain what to do.
Sean hurriedly asked the neighbors if the back of the property was fenced off. He learned that the neighbors were just finishing off a major fencing job of the perimeter and confirmed that the property was fenced off at the far end.
“You’re mine!” Sean yelled after the goat and turned around to go back up the hill to retrieve his mower.
Meanwhile I realized that this goat was beyond my abilities to handle and if I wanted it caught I would have to rely on more than my neighbor, I needed his owner to intercede and capture this thing. I drove back to my house, ran in for the phone book, saw the message light blinking on the phone and punched it while searching for the number. Fortunately it was my husband explaining that Billy’s owner’s number was located right by the phone. Talk about good timing. I grabbed the number and my cell phone and started back down the hill again where I had left the goat and my neighbor. Punching the number in I was horror struck when I heard a fax machine beep in my ear. Checking the number again I dialed as I reached the property where Sean’s kids’ car was and I caught a glimpse of them circling a panting, cornered goat. Again I reached a fax machine.
Great! I told myself, I try to get a hold of the owner and I get his fax machine! I looked at the goat and began to get suspicious.
Sean had parked his lawnmower at the opening of the new neighbor’s property where they were hurriedly trying to finish off their fencing project. He grabbed a second rope and was yelling instructions to the kids on how to wrangle the goat. I watched in amazement feeling stupid, frustrated, and wondering yet again, why I wanted the goat (and more importantly what was I doing in the country?)
After several misses the kids finally got the goat tangled up in a bunch of bushes the natives call “deer scrub”. I’ve learned that deer scrub seems to apply to any scrawny low growing shrub in that area. I heard Sean’s daughter scream a “careful, Dad!” some stifled oafs and orders to wrap rope around the horns of the goat. I couldn’t see all that was happening because of all of the deer scrub. Sean came around the edges of some brush grappling a now roped up Billy.
Sean’s son yelled out at me in question if he could have a ride back to the house while his dad wrestled with the goat, which I agreed to but only after I was sure Sean had the goat.
“Your husband owes me a beer!” Sean yelled up at me half dragging half outrunning the goat. I thought my husband owed him more than a case of beer and asked Sean’s son what his dad liked to drink. Sean meanwhile bellowed out, “Someone needs to drive my lawnmower!”
Sean’s son couldn’t do it; unknown to me his daughter had just driven home with her car and that left Sean and me. I yelled back that I would get his wife, and I drove back to Sean’s house to drop off his son and gather reinforcements.
His daughter was at the house and learning of the dilemma ran with her mom back to their car to go and help Sean. Sean’s son meanwhile offered use of one of the trucks which reminded me that I also had a truck, filled with rope and chains and I quickly drove back to my house to retrieve it.
Driving my husband’s 4x4, wanna-be-monster-truck, a twin to the original Big Foot monster truck, less the monster tires, I drove back to catch up with my neighbor. I found his daughter dragging the goat and my neighbor onboard his lawnmower san wagon, riding herd behind them. He took one look at the truck and me in the passenger seat above him and said, “There’s no way in hell I’m loading that goat into the back of this thing!”
I smiled, shrugged and said, “It was an option.”
I turned the truck around. Waved a thanks at my perspiring neighbors who were putting the finishing touches on their hurriedly assembled fence and drove the truck back to my house where I was joined shortly thereafter by Billy, Sean’s daughter, and Sean with mower.
“Now that we’ve got him here, how do you propose we keep him?” Sean bellowed between gasps of breath. I looked around at my backyard which had a lean-to setup for livestock that now housed a ’56 Ford pickup and sighed. My boys were car buffs, not animal people.
“We need chain.” Sean said. Again I looked around at all the motor parts, piles of wood, transmission san car, and he piped up with “I think I have something at my place.”
Sighing yet again I watched him walk around my 4x4 and towards his tractor. His daughter meanwhile was trying to coax Billy to drink some water.
“Here’s some!” Sean bellowed as he pulled out of my 4x4’s bed a twenty-foot long chain that a diesel tow-truck would be proud to own. It must have weighed fifty pounds. I panicked at the thought of tying that around the goat’s neck. I wanted to kill the animal but not like that.
I looked around and spotted my dogs choker chains and grabbed them. “Can we do something with these?” I asked showing him the chains. He grabbed one and began fiddling with it. Before long we had Billy choker chained, then tow chained. But Billy had to put his two cents in and began to drag the chain away in a daring escape that wrapped him around an oak tree. I grabbed the end of the tow chain while instructions were yelled at me to wrap it around myself. I envisioned myself being towed down the road by a stupid goat with people wondering why I was using a tow chain to walk him!
A few more minor adjustments to the chains and we had Billy hooked up to the bumper of the ’56 Ford to share the lean-to and made sure he had a flake of alfalfa and water.
With ever so many thanks that I knew could never be enough; I watched my neighbor and his daughter climb onto the lawn mower and slowly pull away.
With goat safely stowed away, I went inside and grabbed my purse. I was going to town to do some shopping. With the knowledge of what my neighbor’s drink of choice was and an idea on what to get for the wrangling kids I ran down to the local grocery.
Later, I pulled up in front of my neighbor’s gated home and pulled out the case of pale ale, ice cream and root beer for the kids to make floats. They had been swimming when they were interrupted to go goat chasing and I thought what better way to cool off than with root beer floats. I was invited up to the house where we ended up retelling our tales and cross-referencing to try and make sense out of what just happened.
After several drinks the gist of the story went: my goat was on loan. The owner told us he was well behaved. He left it with us then plugged his fax machine into his phone. Try to leave a message now sucker. His goat heard some goats up at the top of the hill. Turns out the people who own the house with the rock outcroppings have four goats of their own. In true “Peppy La Pew” fashion my loaner, un-neutered (not wethered is the goat term) goat was bouncing up the hill to find the love of his life, or at least of the moment. Before the passion-inflamed goat could reach his intended destination the wrangling goat herders thwarted him. Enter the cavalry (Me in her car, Sean on his lawnmower, kids in their car with dripping suits). Goat gets chased, neighbors hurriedly finish a fencing job, kids corner goat, goat gets dragged home and chained by the Titanic’s anchor chain to an old pickup.
Meanwhile we all reek of Billy, the studly goat, as flies buzzed and drinks flowed all around. And that was how my husband found us as they pulled to a stop in front of the gate of my neighbor’s house. My husband popped out and my son drove to our house. My car is parked at the gate; I assumed he’d seen me. My neighbor, sails flying (sheets to the wind) confronts my husband with his fermented cologne (“Au d’goat) and informs him that we have had one hell of a day. At which my husband finally sees me sitting next to my neighbor’s wife where we’d been commiserating about men. With prolific storytelling my neighbor regales our heroic endeavors to recapture Billy the Wayward goat. My son pulls up again on a mini motorcycle to join us, where we all end up laughing over the retelling of our day’s misadventures.
Billy was transferred onto a dog run cable, tied to a tree in a grove of trees, given a bucket of water, a flake of alfalfa and has since tied himself around the tree on an ever shortening leash three times. Some old goats just never learn.
Billy
Since we live on three-plus untamed, weed-cluttered acres it has always been in the back of our mind to get a goat to do some of the simpler weed eating. An opportunity arose to try out a goat when someone, I hesitate to call a friend, offered us the use of his Boer goat. This would be great, we thought. All of our weed eating would be taken care of for the mere cost of a salt lick and bale of alfalfa (it seems they need a bonus for eating weeds). I couldn’t wait to watch him in action. I did mention he was a he? Billy’s his name, as in Billy Goat. (His owner’s choice not mine).
My first full day home with Billy was spent without my husband and son (the boys) around. Being car guys there was a car event that they had planned to attend and so I awoke to the baleful bleating of the goat. Being a city girl I assume all barnyard animals to be like dogs…or cats and his bleating was A) a request for attention, B) a request for food or water, or C) a request for freedom. I chose a combination of A and B wanting to offer food and attention to the lonely little guy. I went to the store and bought the smallest bag of goat grain (a 50# sack), rented a movie (it was my day off), and bought a cup of coffee (Mocha Latte at the gas station, we didn’t have a Starbucks and the gas station mochas are pretty good!). My intent was to go home, drink my coffee make friends with Billy, and then watch my movie.
When I arrived home, I checked the yard for Billy and didn’t see him immediately. I figured he was exploring the brush filled property and the grazing opportunities and I simply couldn’t see him behind my overgrown, weed-cluttered bushes. Going back to my coffee I proceeded to plan out my day deciding whether to watch the movie now or wait until later, get the goat food out of my car or open the bag in the trunk (I wasn’t seriously considering that option). It was half way through that cup that I received a telephone call from my next-door neighbor, Sean. Sean is a very likable character that like me can have a prolific vocabulary and loves to hear himself talk…loudly, okay that part’s not like me.
“Suzy!” he boomed through my phone receiver, “is that Billy up on the hill?”
My house is situated on the top of a hill thinking he meant mine jokingly responded, “Probably.” But there are other hills around me, higher hills. “Which hill are we talking about?”
“I’m looking up the hill where that Spanish looking hotel is.” He said referring to a neighbor’s house across the street from me and up a steep slope. “Do you see the house up there above it? Then the other house to the right?” To my vague uh-huhs (I was still in the kitchen, no where near the view he was directing me) but he continued, “See the outcropping of rocks and the white dog looking animal?”
I finally made it out to my front yard and was scoping the ridgeline above my neighbor’s house trying to find the houses he had referred to. Still not seeing the animal in question I said “uh-huh”.
“Isn’t that Billy?”
“Uh-oh.”
My neighbor had sent his two kids and a visiting friend up the hill and I saw their car weaving along the slope road to a house at the end of the ridge where a precipice of rock outcroppings were capped by a white furry animal. Out of the car they poured scrambling over the rocks with cries of “Billy, here Billy.”
In dismay I ran to my back deck and looked out over my vacant yard. “Uh-oh,” I repeated.
I could hear my neighbor’s booming laughter as he watched his kids try to wrangle the goat. “I think he’s happy up there.” He commented.
Hanging up with Sean I ran out and watched the kids try to work with the goat and wondered why I thought having a goat was such a great idea.
In a panic I called my son at his car show an hour away and when he answered told him that ‘the goat’ got out and was up the hill from us. He asked why these things always happened when he and my husband were gone from the house, and then explained there was nothing they could do, they were an hour away. I told him that Sean’s kids were trying to round him up and he agreed they’d probably get him better than I could. I hung up and scrambled to find rope and remembered the grain in the back of my car. I hauled the bag out of the trunk and attempted to open it without spilling the contents all over the driveway. I grabbed a Tupperware container and put a handful of grain in there, looked up the hill and watched as Billy jumped to a higher rock, tail wagging with kids yelling and coaxing right behind. I added more grain to the container.
Jumping in my car I drove down the road a short distance to where the entrance to the long sloped driveway was and began the foreign-to-me drive up this winding one lane road not appreciating the houses that toggled off to the side and avoiding the cliff like view of the houses below. Finally I arrived at the top where the kids had parked their car, grabbed my Tupperware full of grain and offered it to them.
They had in the meantime chased Billy down from his rocky precipice and were herding him back down the hillside to my house, or at least that was the general direction. I noted that he was in a fenced off yard that had an access road back down the driveway. I hopped in my car, got turned around and headed back down hoping to head off the wandering goat.
Just as I reached the access drive I ran into Sean who was now aboard his riding lawn mower (with wagon in tow) and heading up the ridgeline drive to us. Spotting the goat now escaping the fenced yard and running down the ridgeline driveway he turned his mower around and yelling at the goat started driving back down the driveway. Because it was a one way drive, all I could see was the backside of Billie trotting down the road in front of Sean who was cruising at full lawn mower speed and twirling a rope in his hands like a drunken cowboy yelling “yee-hah!” I was stuck behind his weaving tractor wondering how I was going to catch this animal and trying to avoid hitting my slower paced, lawnmower-driving neighbor.
At one point along the ridge road Billy feinted to the right and started towards an open field as my neighbor hopped off his lawn mower and began tying the rope to a pole. Meanwhile his mower rolled unmanned a little further down the road into a ditch. With a smile he turned to coax Billy to come to him so that he could throw the other end of the rope on him. Billy wasn’t having that and bolted again down the driveway to the entrance where he crossed the street and entered yet another neighbor’s yard. By that time I had pulled over, offered Sean the grain (which I had been assured by Billy’s owner was like candy to him) and watched with increasing horror as the goat bolted away through the neighbor’s yard.
Sean ran after him with another rope and yelled to the neighbors, who happened to be out putting up a fence, “Stop that goat! Don’t let him get away!”
Yeah, right. I watched from the curb not certain what to do.
Sean hurriedly asked the neighbors if the back of the property was fenced off. He learned that the neighbors were just finishing off a major fencing job of the perimeter and confirmed that the property was fenced off at the far end.
“You’re mine!” Sean yelled after the goat and turned around to go back up the hill to retrieve his mower.
Meanwhile I realized that this goat was beyond my abilities to handle and if I wanted it caught I would have to rely on more than my neighbor, I needed his owner to intercede and capture this thing. I drove back to my house, ran in for the phone book, saw the message light blinking on the phone and punched it while searching for the number. Fortunately it was my husband explaining that Billy’s owner’s number was located right by the phone. Talk about good timing. I grabbed the number and my cell phone and started back down the hill again where I had left the goat and my neighbor. Punching the number in I was horror struck when I heard a fax machine beep in my ear. Checking the number again I dialed as I reached the property where Sean’s kids’ car was and I caught a glimpse of them circling a panting, cornered goat. Again I reached a fax machine.
Great! I told myself, I try to get a hold of the owner and I get his fax machine! I looked at the goat and began to get suspicious.
Sean had parked his lawnmower at the opening of the new neighbor’s property where they were hurriedly trying to finish off their fencing project. He grabbed a second rope and was yelling instructions to the kids on how to wrangle the goat. I watched in amazement feeling stupid, frustrated, and wondering yet again, why I wanted the goat (and more importantly what was I doing in the country?)
After several misses the kids finally got the goat tangled up in a bunch of bushes the natives call “deer scrub”. I’ve learned that deer scrub seems to apply to any scrawny low growing shrub in that area. I heard Sean’s daughter scream a “careful, Dad!” some stifled oafs and orders to wrap rope around the horns of the goat. I couldn’t see all that was happening because of all of the deer scrub. Sean came around the edges of some brush grappling a now roped up Billy.
Sean’s son yelled out at me in question if he could have a ride back to the house while his dad wrestled with the goat, which I agreed to but only after I was sure Sean had the goat.
“Your husband owes me a beer!” Sean yelled up at me half dragging half outrunning the goat. I thought my husband owed him more than a case of beer and asked Sean’s son what his dad liked to drink. Sean meanwhile bellowed out, “Someone needs to drive my lawnmower!”
Sean’s son couldn’t do it; unknown to me his daughter had just driven home with her car and that left Sean and me. I yelled back that I would get his wife, and I drove back to Sean’s house to drop off his son and gather reinforcements.
His daughter was at the house and learning of the dilemma ran with her mom back to their car to go and help Sean. Sean’s son meanwhile offered use of one of the trucks which reminded me that I also had a truck, filled with rope and chains and I quickly drove back to my house to retrieve it.
Driving my husband’s 4x4, wanna-be-monster-truck, a twin to the original Big Foot monster truck, less the monster tires, I drove back to catch up with my neighbor. I found his daughter dragging the goat and my neighbor onboard his lawnmower san wagon, riding herd behind them. He took one look at the truck and me in the passenger seat above him and said, “There’s no way in hell I’m loading that goat into the back of this thing!”
I smiled, shrugged and said, “It was an option.”
I turned the truck around. Waved a thanks at my perspiring neighbors who were putting the finishing touches on their hurriedly assembled fence and drove the truck back to my house where I was joined shortly thereafter by Billy, Sean’s daughter, and Sean with mower.
“Now that we’ve got him here, how do you propose we keep him?” Sean bellowed between gasps of breath. I looked around at my backyard which had a lean-to setup for livestock that now housed a ’56 Ford pickup and sighed. My boys were car buffs, not animal people.
“We need chain.” Sean said. Again I looked around at all the motor parts, piles of wood, transmission san car, and he piped up with “I think I have something at my place.”
Sighing yet again I watched him walk around my 4x4 and towards his tractor. His daughter meanwhile was trying to coax Billy to drink some water.
“Here’s some!” Sean bellowed as he pulled out of my 4x4’s bed a twenty-foot long chain that a diesel tow-truck would be proud to own. It must have weighed fifty pounds. I panicked at the thought of tying that around the goat’s neck. I wanted to kill the animal but not like that.
I looked around and spotted my dogs choker chains and grabbed them. “Can we do something with these?” I asked showing him the chains. He grabbed one and began fiddling with it. Before long we had Billy choker chained, then tow chained. But Billy had to put his two cents in and began to drag the chain away in a daring escape that wrapped him around an oak tree. I grabbed the end of the tow chain while instructions were yelled at me to wrap it around myself. I envisioned myself being towed down the road by a stupid goat with people wondering why I was using a tow chain to walk him!
A few more minor adjustments to the chains and we had Billy hooked up to the bumper of the ’56 Ford to share the lean-to and made sure he had a flake of alfalfa and water.
With ever so many thanks that I knew could never be enough; I watched my neighbor and his daughter climb onto the lawn mower and slowly pull away.
With goat safely stowed away, I went inside and grabbed my purse. I was going to town to do some shopping. With the knowledge of what my neighbor’s drink of choice was and an idea on what to get for the wrangling kids I ran down to the local grocery.
Later, I pulled up in front of my neighbor’s gated home and pulled out the case of pale ale, ice cream and root beer for the kids to make floats. They had been swimming when they were interrupted to go goat chasing and I thought what better way to cool off than with root beer floats. I was invited up to the house where we ended up retelling our tales and cross-referencing to try and make sense out of what just happened.
After several drinks the gist of the story went: my goat was on loan. The owner told us he was well behaved. He left it with us then plugged his fax machine into his phone. Try to leave a message now sucker. His goat heard some goats up at the top of the hill. Turns out the people who own the house with the rock outcroppings have four goats of their own. In true “Peppy La Pew” fashion my loaner, un-neutered (not wethered is the goat term) goat was bouncing up the hill to find the love of his life, or at least of the moment. Before the passion-inflamed goat could reach his intended destination the wrangling goat herders thwarted him. Enter the cavalry (Me in her car, Sean on his lawnmower, kids in their car with dripping suits). Goat gets chased, neighbors hurriedly finish a fencing job, kids corner goat, goat gets dragged home and chained by the Titanic’s anchor chain to an old pickup.
Meanwhile we all reek of Billy, the studly goat, as flies buzzed and drinks flowed all around. And that was how my husband found us as they pulled to a stop in front of the gate of my neighbor’s house. My husband popped out and my son drove to our house. My car is parked at the gate; I assumed he’d seen me. My neighbor, sails flying (sheets to the wind) confronts my husband with his fermented cologne (“Au d’goat) and informs him that we have had one hell of a day. At which my husband finally sees me sitting next to my neighbor’s wife where we’d been commiserating about men. With prolific storytelling my neighbor regales our heroic endeavors to recapture Billy the Wayward goat. My son pulls up again on a mini motorcycle to join us, where we all end up laughing over the retelling of our day’s misadventures.
Billy was transferred onto a dog run cable, tied to a tree in a grove of trees, given a bucket of water, a flake of alfalfa and has since tied himself around the tree on an ever shortening leash three times. Some old goats just never learn.
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