Where shall I begin, really it wasn't all that wacky of a day on the wacky scale of things; but for nostalgia sake and for the fact that my memory sucks, here's a blog post on last Friday. I started it Friday and finished it today, it's been a busy week.
My daughter is almost 15 and today I got her a new kitty. I also brought home a new goat. It was sunny and a perfect; 70 degrees all day.
I was at my friend, Karlene's house, and she was showing me her pigs, chickens, turkey, geese, cow and of course, her goats. Her barnyard is looking so picturesque. She told me that her husband had bought her a new kitten for Mother's day (because that's what every mother-of-seven and a ginormous heard of goats wants for mother's day, donchyaknow?).
I told her how the week prior I'd given our kittens (Archer and Bumpkin, two that Karlene had given me) to my sister who discovered a large mouse infestation in her chicken house. She had already lost 4 kitties due to mean woodland creatures as she lives in the woods, but with the mice, finally agreed to try it again. It was good timing because the combination of our 4 cats were decimating our new bird population that had just moved in for the next few months to hatch out their babies. They were catching about 5 birds a day, and we had had it with their mad catching skilz. Besides, only our house cat, Oreo, was catching actual mice, she had to go far to find them too, we haven't had mice since we got her last year. Well after I gave those 2 cats to my sister, our other outdoor cat, Fred, decided to get lost, perhaps he was looking for his buddies or maybe a dog ate him, I really don't know, but we were sad he left, he was a sweetie. Then 2 days later Oreo disappeared, she was my son's cat, she was fixed, not very cuddly but a great mouser. That was pretty upsetting, but we have owned 7 cats in the past 18 months and now we have none...
Karlene, being the saint that she is, gladly gave me her long time barn kitty, Yoshi. She is snuggly and a moucer. What a sweetie.
One of the reasons I made the trek up to Karlene's was to get our new little goat, Belka (daughter of Elka) disbuded. Her horns had grown a lot in five weeks and I was behind the 8 ball getting her poor little head burned. Karlene is my goat mentor and she still does all sorts of uncomfortable goat farmer duties I haven't learned yet. She burned large circles around her horns while the goat screamed her little heart out. The smell is awful and there is a LOT of smoke, burning flesh and hair, that smell.
The other reason I was there was to take my friend, Amber's, buck that she was renting from Karlene back to Karlene. Karlene is an hour away. I was also taking our goat, Lady to get bred and in the meantime she would send me home with a goat in milk since hubby is annoyed at feeding animals that aren't producing. So, the new goat I brought home is, Elaine. A sweet Nubian who looks just like my other giant Nubian, Amelia but she's only a yearling first freshener and much smaller. We may end up buying her, not sure yet.
Typically when I load up goats to go to Karlene's I put down a tarp in the back of my trusty eight passenger 2003 Chevy Venture, roll up the edges a bit, and they may poo or pee one time each. Zero times, if I'm lucky and I have been lucky. Well on Friday I learned a lot more about bucks behavior. It's one thing to know about buck smell, but it's another thing to "know" about buck smell. You see, bucks pee on themselves to make them more handsome and attractive to female goats. Their wiener even has a little spinney end on it so that when they pee it is not straight down but in a whirl y-gig fashion. I am so thankful this buck's whirl y-gig was either broken off, or non-functional. They also pee a lot more around girl goats, the smell is attractive to them. And apparently poop much, much, much more than girls do. That stupid buck peed at least 8 times in that hour drive, and I mean PEED! A lot. He also pooped a lot. Probably another 8 times on that count too. So by the time we got to Karlene's the tarp was full of "mud". Nice huh? Unfortunately my doe was not impressed, there was no "van-a-rockin" from their hanky panky that day. Darn.
The other thing my daughter noticed before we left was that Belka had the runs. Meaning she wasn't feeling well. Karlene is basically my vet too so I knew taking her out there would get her help as well as a burned head. So off we went... I put a blanket on my daughter's lap, buckled in my 4-year-old and we were off! Already late as usual, I didn't really consider what we would use to clean up any gooey droppings from Belka. Huge oversight.
We got 45 minutes out, almost there. "Mama! Can you please pull over right now! She pooped in my hand!" Gross. I pulled over as soon as I could but not quite soon enough. She had to put Belka on the floor and she dribbled more poopy on my daughter's "Alaska Grown" hoodie. She asked her 4-year-old sister to unbuckle her (her hand was still full) and so the 4-year-old, who by that point had taken her mud boots off, stepped right into the dribble glob. When I told her to be careful because I could see she might step in it, she had already done so but quickly jumped back into her booster seat, well, yes, spreading it all over her seat. She promptly sat down (in it) and took her socks off, as if that would help at this point. After my older daughter jumped out of the car with the loose psyco baby goat, it was my job to catch then hold the goat from running wild while my daughter wiped poo from her hand on the alder filled tundra-ish ditch area. After she got a make-shift halter around her I was able to look for some baby wipes, because I never leave home without baby wipes...except on Friday. My youngest child is now 4 and apparently I have not made sure we have a good baby wipe stash in a while...not a good time to find this out. Paper towels? No. Napkins? I always have napkins! Oh, look, there's one. One napkin. A little chincy "they are trying to save money at that cheap drive through" sort of napkin. I wiped the poop off of my wedding ring and fingers; and that was all. I resigned myself to doing a load of laundry when we got home. I saw the buck peeing, saw that he wasn't stopping, contemplated letting him outside but thought better of it, told him to stop, he didn't, so I grabbed his face and looked him straight in the eyes and said, "Stop peeing!" and he stopped. Oh, right, and when I was looking for wipes on the driver side of the van and shut the door behind me, the awesome automatic door that sometimes acts like a jerk decided not to shut and to re-open. Lady decided to make her grand escape and jumped onto my oldest daughter's seat and jump out on the road side of the van. Yay! So the oldest threw the halter/leash at the 4-year-old and yelled, "hold her" as she ran off to catch Lady. But the 4-year-old didn't actually have a grip before it was let go of, so off went Belka. We caught her. I rushed around to shut the door before the buck decided to escape as well, I used my daughter's poopy socks to wipe off the "mud" that Lady had gotten all over my other daughter's seat now. We finally got all three goats back into the van, the hoodie now acting as the dribble catcher on the floor in front of my daughters and both girl's seats slightly marred with goat "mud". Time to GO!!! We got there as fast as possible and I pulled the full tarp out of the van to let it drip dry while I enjoyed my visit. I fetched all of the extra goat droppings that had escaped the tarp, there are always some of those. Fortunately I had a pair of work gloves in the van that I wore the rest of that day 'till I got to Taco Bell on our way home to order us some dinner.
I always wonder what the Taco Bell employees think when I go through their drive through with goats in my car. That's how we roll.
My daughter is almost 15 and today I got her a new kitty. I also brought home a new goat. It was sunny and a perfect; 70 degrees all day.
I was at my friend, Karlene's house, and she was showing me her pigs, chickens, turkey, geese, cow and of course, her goats. Her barnyard is looking so picturesque. She told me that her husband had bought her a new kitten for Mother's day (because that's what every mother-of-seven and a ginormous heard of goats wants for mother's day, donchyaknow?).
I told her how the week prior I'd given our kittens (Archer and Bumpkin, two that Karlene had given me) to my sister who discovered a large mouse infestation in her chicken house. She had already lost 4 kitties due to mean woodland creatures as she lives in the woods, but with the mice, finally agreed to try it again. It was good timing because the combination of our 4 cats were decimating our new bird population that had just moved in for the next few months to hatch out their babies. They were catching about 5 birds a day, and we had had it with their mad catching skilz. Besides, only our house cat, Oreo, was catching actual mice, she had to go far to find them too, we haven't had mice since we got her last year. Well after I gave those 2 cats to my sister, our other outdoor cat, Fred, decided to get lost, perhaps he was looking for his buddies or maybe a dog ate him, I really don't know, but we were sad he left, he was a sweetie. Then 2 days later Oreo disappeared, she was my son's cat, she was fixed, not very cuddly but a great mouser. That was pretty upsetting, but we have owned 7 cats in the past 18 months and now we have none...
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| our 3 barn kitties 2 weeks ago |
Karlene, being the saint that she is, gladly gave me her long time barn kitty, Yoshi. She is snuggly and a moucer. What a sweetie.
One of the reasons I made the trek up to Karlene's was to get our new little goat, Belka (daughter of Elka) disbuded. Her horns had grown a lot in five weeks and I was behind the 8 ball getting her poor little head burned. Karlene is my goat mentor and she still does all sorts of uncomfortable goat farmer duties I haven't learned yet. She burned large circles around her horns while the goat screamed her little heart out. The smell is awful and there is a LOT of smoke, burning flesh and hair, that smell.
The other reason I was there was to take my friend, Amber's, buck that she was renting from Karlene back to Karlene. Karlene is an hour away. I was also taking our goat, Lady to get bred and in the meantime she would send me home with a goat in milk since hubby is annoyed at feeding animals that aren't producing. So, the new goat I brought home is, Elaine. A sweet Nubian who looks just like my other giant Nubian, Amelia but she's only a yearling first freshener and much smaller. We may end up buying her, not sure yet.
Typically when I load up goats to go to Karlene's I put down a tarp in the back of my trusty eight passenger 2003 Chevy Venture, roll up the edges a bit, and they may poo or pee one time each. Zero times, if I'm lucky and I have been lucky. Well on Friday I learned a lot more about bucks behavior. It's one thing to know about buck smell, but it's another thing to "know" about buck smell. You see, bucks pee on themselves to make them more handsome and attractive to female goats. Their wiener even has a little spinney end on it so that when they pee it is not straight down but in a whirl y-gig fashion. I am so thankful this buck's whirl y-gig was either broken off, or non-functional. They also pee a lot more around girl goats, the smell is attractive to them. And apparently poop much, much, much more than girls do. That stupid buck peed at least 8 times in that hour drive, and I mean PEED! A lot. He also pooped a lot. Probably another 8 times on that count too. So by the time we got to Karlene's the tarp was full of "mud". Nice huh? Unfortunately my doe was not impressed, there was no "van-a-rockin" from their hanky panky that day. Darn.
The other thing my daughter noticed before we left was that Belka had the runs. Meaning she wasn't feeling well. Karlene is basically my vet too so I knew taking her out there would get her help as well as a burned head. So off we went... I put a blanket on my daughter's lap, buckled in my 4-year-old and we were off! Already late as usual, I didn't really consider what we would use to clean up any gooey droppings from Belka. Huge oversight.
We got 45 minutes out, almost there. "Mama! Can you please pull over right now! She pooped in my hand!" Gross. I pulled over as soon as I could but not quite soon enough. She had to put Belka on the floor and she dribbled more poopy on my daughter's "Alaska Grown" hoodie. She asked her 4-year-old sister to unbuckle her (her hand was still full) and so the 4-year-old, who by that point had taken her mud boots off, stepped right into the dribble glob. When I told her to be careful because I could see she might step in it, she had already done so but quickly jumped back into her booster seat, well, yes, spreading it all over her seat. She promptly sat down (in it) and took her socks off, as if that would help at this point. After my older daughter jumped out of the car with the loose psyco baby goat, it was my job to catch then hold the goat from running wild while my daughter wiped poo from her hand on the alder filled tundra-ish ditch area. After she got a make-shift halter around her I was able to look for some baby wipes, because I never leave home without baby wipes...except on Friday. My youngest child is now 4 and apparently I have not made sure we have a good baby wipe stash in a while...not a good time to find this out. Paper towels? No. Napkins? I always have napkins! Oh, look, there's one. One napkin. A little chincy "they are trying to save money at that cheap drive through" sort of napkin. I wiped the poop off of my wedding ring and fingers; and that was all. I resigned myself to doing a load of laundry when we got home. I saw the buck peeing, saw that he wasn't stopping, contemplated letting him outside but thought better of it, told him to stop, he didn't, so I grabbed his face and looked him straight in the eyes and said, "Stop peeing!" and he stopped. Oh, right, and when I was looking for wipes on the driver side of the van and shut the door behind me, the awesome automatic door that sometimes acts like a jerk decided not to shut and to re-open. Lady decided to make her grand escape and jumped onto my oldest daughter's seat and jump out on the road side of the van. Yay! So the oldest threw the halter/leash at the 4-year-old and yelled, "hold her" as she ran off to catch Lady. But the 4-year-old didn't actually have a grip before it was let go of, so off went Belka. We caught her. I rushed around to shut the door before the buck decided to escape as well, I used my daughter's poopy socks to wipe off the "mud" that Lady had gotten all over my other daughter's seat now. We finally got all three goats back into the van, the hoodie now acting as the dribble catcher on the floor in front of my daughters and both girl's seats slightly marred with goat "mud". Time to GO!!! We got there as fast as possible and I pulled the full tarp out of the van to let it drip dry while I enjoyed my visit. I fetched all of the extra goat droppings that had escaped the tarp, there are always some of those. Fortunately I had a pair of work gloves in the van that I wore the rest of that day 'till I got to Taco Bell on our way home to order us some dinner.
I always wonder what the Taco Bell employees think when I go through their drive through with goats in my car. That's how we roll.
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| Yoshi, Elaine and Belka on the ride home. |
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| Youngest was woken from her nap by kitty snuggles. |
5 comments:
One word...wow. You know, you were probably right near my house. You can always call, and I'll bring you some baby wipes!! :D
No, at that point I was 20 minutes past you. :) I probably would have, but at that point everything needed to be washed...lol.
I agree, Buck's thingy must have been broken. He really never smelt too bad, and thinking back...all the goats drank a ton of water that day. Maybe I should have cut him off?
Once again, best laugh of the day :) You're awesome!
He didn't smell bad at first, but after an hour of that even with windows open, my van was ripe! I wondered if you set me up! lol
I told him to do it, I knew it would make a great memory! ;)
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