The following conversation took place this morning, as I was tending to the horses, chickens, and goats.

Alys: Ranger, get your head out of the chicken feed.
Ranger: It’s here. Gotta eat.
A: There’s fresh hay in your manger.
R: Want this.
A: No you don’t.
R: Yes I do.
A: No you don’t.
R: Don’t yank on my collar.
A: Look what I have in my hand.
R: Ohh, packer pellets.
A: Yes, for you.

Peaches and Rover

R: (To himself) I have a choice here. I can either follow Alys’s hand and end up back in the pen, or I can keep eating chicken feed. I think that I’ll go with Alys because otherwise, she will yank me around.
A: Into your pen. Good goat.
R: More packer pellets?
A: Yes, here are a few more.
R: Hey, when are you going to clean our pen?
A: Maybe tomorrow.
R: Why not today?
A: Because I am not going to feel very good later today.
R: How do you know how you are going to feel?
A: Because later today I am going to the dentist, and he is going to pull a tooth.
R: Is this the guy that comes here and removes my scurs?
A: No, that’s Zach Kaiser, our veterinarian.
R: He’s not a goat guy.
A: NO he’s not. But he loves all animals.
R: And yes, he did a good job sewing up Stormy when she tore her ear.
A: You remember Stormy?
R: Yes I do. She was my buddy.
A: You remember Rover?
R: Yes I do. He was my buddy.
A: Do you remember Peaches?
R: Yes I do. She was not my buddy.
A: Huh?
R: She was the head of the herd where I came from, Matt Shaw’s goat farm. She ran the show there. And Rover and I, we were really glad when we got here and she stayed behind. Then one day, she appeared here.
A: And you and Rover gang banged her.
R: Yes, this was before we were castrated.
A: Yes. A question for you – would you have rather been banded or have the procedure done surgically?
R: If I’d had my druthers, I would not have had either done. Rover, I think, would have felt the same way.
A: Well, you both were becoming very buck-like.
R: Ohh, like Buckwheat.
A: Yes, I could smell him way down on the road, when I was taking the horses for a walk.
R: Why didn’t you get him neutered?
A: Because he was a registered Alpine, and so his future centered around being a breeding animal.
R: So that more stinky goats might be brought into the world?
A: That’s a very negative way of phrasing it. The males remain stinky if they aren’t neutered. The females never smell bad.
R: Why is this?
A: It has to do with evolutionary convenience. If a female goat stinks, she will be less apt to be put on the milking line.
R: You milk Swampy.
A: Yes.
R: And you are going to milk Sassy.
A: Yes.
R: And I am going to continue to get to hang out.
A: Yes.
R: And get into the chicken feed.
A: No.

Next: 86. 3/29/22: Prayers from the Ark