Chasing dream goats

"Mom's Foolish Purchase" stands on a doghouse behind one of the goats whose name I don't remember.

The Great DeJournett Brush Goat experiment

It's been several years since I had goats, but this morning they came back to haunt me in my dreams. I guess I'll never be rid of them.

Just before I woke up at 5 a.m. regular time, I was chasing that wild, ill-tempered red and white goat that my kids christened "Mom's Foolish Purchase."

When a goat doesn't want to be caught, there's not much you can do to catch it, especially when you're working single-handedly, as I usually was.

MFP was a beautiful goat. That's why I was lured into the foolish idea to buy her, as she sat in the grassy pen near Bloomfield, gazing out at us, as my son and I looked them over. The owner ignored her and directed us to another choice.

"This is a good goat," he said, as he pointed to a mild-mannered hornless (poled) goat. "She had twins last time. She's a good mama."

We bought her, and, indeed, she was a "good goat." She even later had triplets for me. Never mind that they didn't live. (See how goat memories plague me? I'll have a good memory, which will immediately be overshadowed by a bad one. "Sweet Pea," as we called the mild-mannered nanny goat, developed mastitis and lost all three babies.)

Anyway, I was telling about Mom's Foolish Purchase. I was fooled by her pretty red and white color and the fact that she was so alert and watchful. If I had known anything about goats, I'd have known that "watchfulness" is not necessarily an admirable trait in a goat.

I should have been further put off from my foolish purchase, when I saw the owner grab her by the horns and wrestle her, as she bucked and thrashed against him. He was a big man. How could I have thought I could ever handle a goat like that?

Unfortunately, I was of the foolish opinion that I would just turn the goats loose in my overgrown pen and leave them to their work, which was to clear brush--of which there was an abundance.

Yes, I knew I would have to provide them with food, water, and shelter, but it never occurred to me that I would have to catch them up several times a year and 1) worm them, 2) trim their hooves, and 3) do whatever else needed doing.

Mom's Foolish Purchase was so wild that no one was ever able to lay a hand on her again, after that first day.

You can see how alert she is in the photo. She didn't miss a thing!

Even our billy favored her over all the other goats and would chase them out of the snug little house that my son made for them. MFP got to stay inside the cozy house, while all the others shivered next to it, through rain, sleet and snow.

I'm not cut out for goat herding--or for raising any livestock, for that matter. When the weather is bad, I don't sleep, worrying about my critters, outside in the cold.

MFP had several beautiful white offspring, which were nearly as wild as she was. In the summertime, I loved to watch them playing in the pasture. In the wintertime, I was as miserable as they were.

We lived together in peaceful coexistence, until Billy the Kid (alias William H. Bonney) tore down all my fences.

Now, my goat pen, which was once so tidy and free of weeds, is filled with mimosa trees, blackberry brambles, poison ivy, and assorted tall grasses. It's a sad sight, I'll tell you.

I often sit on my front porch and long for the days when my goat-herding experiment was going well, when the sun was shining, the goats were browsing in the pen, and all was well with the world.