[Jacob-list] The sheep from the goats

[Susan Nielsen]

"... and he shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd
separateth the sheep from the goats."

Good grief. This morning I look down from the house, down at
the paddock where the bred ewes and the ram await breakfast at that
time of day. And the ewes are all standing in a corner, looking as
with horror, at An Animal. So is Big John.

My first thought is that something has happened to one of my
sheep. My second thought is, "What _is_ that?" In the middle of
the yard, alone and Not a Sheep, is a black and white animal.
Walking back and forth.

"Richard! What kind of animal is that?"

"What?"

"THAT!"

He gets the binoculars and looks out. "It's not a sheep," he says.
"It's not a dog. It's not ours. Why's it in there?"

It takes closer inspection to work out that it is a really ugly
pygmy goat. I mean, really ugly. I know it is a goat, a buck goat,
as soon as I get in range of his wind. How he got there: I see a
place to be repaired, where a goat can go under a fence. Why he got
there... some phone calls identify a yard where goats have browsed
until last week. All of them have been collected up and moved out,
except this one. Now, I ask, who leaves one solitary lonesome goat
in a pen?

Two young things, teenage girls, show up with a pickup truck to
collect him. Two teenage girls who do not have a rope, do not have
a cover on the pickup, and do not have the first idea how to catch
a goat. Let alone how to control him. I open the gate and move
the Jacobs off to a corner, expecting these young things to come
in with their borrowed rope and put it around the neck of the
goat. Next thing, I look over my shoulder to see the goat wandering
around by himself in the pasture outside the gate, and the young
things watching him. William, the mule, has taken matters in hand
as it were and is cutting the goat toward the fence, like a good
cutting mule ought to. The young things shriek. "That horse is
killing him!" Horse.

Where do they raise farm kids these days?

I take the rope from one of the young things and drop it over the
head of the goat. They have tied an enormous loop in the rope, big
enough for a heifer, and it falls uselessly over his shoulders. He
steps through the loop. They have also left open the gate behind them.
"You want to go hook that?" I say as I grab the goat by its dorsal
hairs (Oh, phew. Oh, I mean, buck goat phew!) Richard watches jadedly
from a safe distance. "You are going to smell," he says.

I hand the rope with the successfully attached goat to one of the
young things. The goat does not move. She shakes the rope. The
goat does not move. I take the rope, grab the tail of the goat,
and steer it to the road.

"Are you putting him in there?" I ask, of the truck.

"I don't know."

"How are you going to keep him in?"

"I don't know."

We walk with the goat. We walk with the goat stinking clear to all
the highest places, held by the rope and driven by his tail, all the
way up the hill and along the road, across the ditch, over the
plantation of small trees, up to the fenced yard where the lonesome
goat does not stay in. I point out the fallen branch which has
pulled down the fence. I point out that a goat alone will doubtless
go looking for company and comfort, and now that he knows where the
sheep live, however inhospitable they are, he will doubtless be back,
so I give them the rope for next time.

And then they say the last thing. "What kind of funny-looking sheep
do you have there?"

Hmmpf.

Susan
--
Susan Layne Nielsen, Shambles Workshops      	|"...Gently down the
Beavercreek, OR, USA -- snielsen at orednet.org  	|stream..." -- Anon.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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