Elmer

 I can't remember if I ever related the time of Elmer the goat.  Feel free to search it out if I did, there are only 900 posts to wade through.  I have a hard copy of all the posts (except the last dozen or so) but they aren't any easier to check.  So, here is the tale of Elmer.

When we first bought this place, all the acres were a tangled mess of thorny vines, grape vines, and of course the ever present poison ivy.  Every weekend we would spend thrashing through the brush and the weeds, cutting out and burning what we could tear loose.  Bob, a friend from work, advised that we should get a goat, as they are brushy eaters and not grass, and he would help us get one. So one weekend we all went to the livestock auction and Bob picked out a young goat, pretty tame and able to be handled easily.  Bob said that no one with any gumption would keep a billy goat (male) and so we made a detour to Bob's barn and he made short work of Elmer's package.  He was now a wether goat (in horses you'd call a male horse a gelding) and off we went to home. 

We bought a stout chain, about 15 feet long, and every morning we would stake the chain in a different spot, with a bucket of water at the very end where Elmer could reach it and not (in theory) tip it over.  At the end of the day we would put him in his pen/stall with more water and grain.  He was a four legged wonder, the way he would mow down the vines and such, and what he didn't eat got cleared by the chain going over it.  However not all was roses on the place.  Goats are amazingly strong, and he routinely pulled loose his chain, until we figured out that fastening the chain around a tree was way more secure.

But there were other problems.  When I would put him in his stall, I had to be really quick to get him most of the way into it, unsnap the chain, and knee him far enough to shut the door.  But he would thwart me, turning around so fast and heading out of his stall.  Then he would head for the electric fence and scoot right under the strand.  If I were still hanging on to his chain, I would get the electric shock right across my face.  And Elmer, free from clean water and a bucket of grain, would jump on top of the car in the driveway(tappet scrape) , and if he was still attached to the chain, he would trail it across the car too (scrape scrape)  I did not know, in the beginning, that goats loved to climb up to the highest point they could reach. But I learned, too late to save the car paint job.  Our dog learned too--sometimes Elmer would head for the old dog on the porch and start humping her.  She would give me the most pained expression, like "get this thing off of me!"  And a wether is not supposed to have urges like this. Once the brush was gone Elmer went back to the live stock auction.  N would say, " what if the buyer mistreates him?" To which I replied, "too bad", knowing most any situation Elmer would rise to (and N never did the unchaining and electric fence zapping).  At the auction the animals would be ushered through the in door where the auctioneer was, then bids, then ushered through the exit door on the right.  And every time the entrance door opened for the next animal I could see Elmer in the holding pen, humping away.

He sold for $11.

I fell again last night, right on the craft table.  Fire and EMS called to hoist me back on my feet.  It must have been a slow night, there were 5 of them.  Two is all that is needed, one on each side.  Today I am sore all over and took an Ultram around 3 in the morning so I could get some rest.  

Bye!