Goats

I'd never had reason to give goats much thought.

Then a decade ago a friend, Tracey and her husband, from my town was moving to rural southeast Colorado to be beekeepers. That was the area that both their families was from, and both pairs of parents still lived there. In fact, they would be living in a house on the property of Tracey's parents.

When musing about how her new life would be, Tracey mentioned numerous times that her father had dozens of goats. Then she'd firmly say, "I'm not going to help out with taking care of those goats." She might be on her parents' property, but she and her husband were going to maintain their own independence. Independence meant not being lassoed into taking care of goats.

A few months after the move, a mutual friend and I made the three hour drive to visit Tracey in Las Animas. She and her husband took us out to eat, took us to see their bees, took us to their honey manufacturing place. The whole time, Tracey kept mentioning her parents' goats. "You'll have to see the goats before you leave" and so forth.

So, at the end of the afternoon, we went to a large corral where there were over thirty goats. I'd never been around goats before, so I had no idea what to expect. But when I emerged twenty minutes later, I was delighted with this new experience.

Goats are incredible. They have such distinct personalities. Many of them were following us around like dogs. They pooped little turds, like rabbits. They'd gaze at us with intense, all-seeing eyes. They were the high point of the trip. And Tracey sure knew an awful lot about the individual goats, for someone who was supposedly "not helping taking care of those goats."

We continued to visit her once or twice a year for a while. At one point, her father had gotten rid of all the goats, because they were too much to take care of. Then, the next time we visited, the goats were back. Tracey said her father had just showed up one day with a truck full of goats that he'd bought at auction.

I could understand that. Goats seem like something that, once you get rid of them, you want them back. There's something so inexplicably appealing about them.