Animal crackers

Helena Handbasket

By Cletus Bianchi

When he came home with us, he was four wobbly white legs and two floppy brown ears. His pitiful cries for mama intrigued our dogs and cows. Those cries woke me up several nights the first week.

He was a featured attraction at our Easter egg party, especially with the little kids. Being pursued by brightly clothed, shrieking little humans made him a bit spooky for a while.

Life got busy as it tends to, and a month or so after the Easter party, we still had not decided what to do with him. To his credit, despite his small size, he had done a very good job of eating most of the yummy weeds in our large back yard.

Even so, what do you do with a goat? Especially when you try to pass yourself off as a cattleman to your buddies?

Our girls had grown attached to him, but only from a distance. He still harbored concerns about partially grown humans. He let me get pretty close to him when I began offering him branches from a native willow…apparently very tasty stuff.

A quick survey of the remaining flora in our yard revealed plenty of native and improved grasses (cowman terms), but not much for a growing goat. Their preferences seem to run more toward flowery plants and those with thorns.

So, one day, as he munched on his willow branches in apparent goat ecstasy, I slipped a blue collar on him. I planned to tie him out during the day at various weedy locations around the house and significantly reduce the hours I spent behind a mower.

Since his world had stopped at the chain-link fence his entire life, he was hesitant to leave the yard. I coaxed him with a willow branch and he willingly followed me to his tether. I left him there surrounded by several days’ of browse (goat term…I’m learning) and went to work.

Goats don’t graze like cattle. A good mama cow will put her head down and munch from side to side, consuming grass with reasonable efficiency in a relatively straight line. Goats I’ve learned will take a bite and as they chew it, look about for something better to eat…call it a random walk.

Add to that two dogs that were very excited about a potential new playmate and you end up with me accomplishing nothing that first day other than untangling him.

I coaxed him back into the yard that first evening with another willow branch (we are frequently visited by coyotes) and pondered the quandary I now faced. Seems like I do that a lot these days…wondering, not how I got into a mess, but how I’m going to gracefully extract myself.

The next morning I led him through the gate and let him roam. I realized the marital capital I was wagering since my wife has lots of nice plants and roses scattered about, but I couldn’t spend another day tethered to our goat.

With so many tasty morsels just outside the gate, it took him quite a while to move away from the yard. I wondered what kind of torture he had endured seeing those lovely weeds just out of reach.

He did his usual random walk, including some potted plants, but with such a diverse buffet of browse at his disposal, he did little damage, always moving on for the next nibble. Eventually, he wandered over where I was working and spent the rest of the day near the dogs and me.

It seems that as the provider of the willow branches, I am his favorite.

And that’s how I became the cattleman with two dogs and a goat following him around his ranch. Of course, anything that wears a collar needs a name. We call him William P. Goat – Billy for short.

Billy suffers a bit of an identity crisis. His two best friends are dogs, so he doesn’t know he’s not a dog at this point. They chase each other around, sleep together, and roam the fields together. He has learned his horns are a good defense against nipping teeth. When it’s petting time, Billy pushes his way in so his horns can be rubbed.

He might be a little too attached to me actually. Many times, I’ve had to chase him out of the job site after he came searching for me, bleating plaintively. Goats are rather indiscriminate about where they leave their droppings. Sawdust is acceptable – poop ain’t.

When we return home, he runs alongside the truck, kicking his heels and bleating his excitement. If he likes you, he’ll put his horns against your calf and lean into you.

Billy loved all of the visiting hunters on opening weekend and they were surprised how much they liked him. Some were a little nervous about having a goat’s horns pressed into their leg, until they realized he was just loving on them. Although he was a little dubious about the strange dogs running around, Billy was very happy with the number of folks willing to rub his horns.

He also wasn’t used to the late hours we kept that weekend and eventually gave up and fell asleep amongst our lawn chairs.

That Saturday morning, with hunters shipped off to the field before sunrise and responsibilities at the festival, I hurriedly hopped in my truck to leave.

It seems that one of the dog habits Billy learned was sleeping under cars. Goats are not as quick as dogs when it comes to hasty retreats. As I felt the rear tire hop over him, Billy bleated in agony.

I stepped from the truck and there he lay, screaming. I quieted him a bit since our girls were still asleep and went into the house for my pistol.

He was still lying there when I returned. I knelt beside him and tried to determine the extent of his injuries. He didn’t appear to be in shock and there was no evidence of bleeding. With a lump in my throat, I got him on his feet. I’m no veterinarian, but when a hind leg is at a right angle to the others, it’s fairly easy to diagnose.

Billy was able to hop along on three legs and as I knelt in front of him, he and I had a heart-to-heart conversation about the .38 headache I had in my jeans pocket. He convinced me he was going to live.

A good white farm truck has about everything you need for any occasion. I snapped a short piece from a surveying stake and grabbed my duct tape from the toolbox. Billy complained as I sat on his head and brought the leg back to within normal parameters. I taped the stake in place, careful not to cut circulation, and let him stand up.

Billy hobbled off a bit and began nibbling on the rose bush.

Three weeks post-trauma as I type this, I can hear him in the back yard, complaining that he hasn’t gotten his morning ‘show goat’ feed. He’s not happy being confined to the yard again, but Dr. Patton says he’s healing well and in a few weeks, Billy should be able to roam with his pack again.

Dr. Patton said I had done a good job with the splint and that Billy was a lucky goat. Though he smiled as we loaded the goat into our suburban, he didn’t laugh.

I really like Dr. Patton…his medical expertise is only rivaled by his concern for the sensitivities of a cattleman.

(click here to read archived columns by Cletus Bianchi)