View From the Tenth Level

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Dan's been home all day and I've been helping him nurse an injured shoulder. He keeps forgetting that he's not 30 years old any more and he shouldn't lift as much or move as quickly as he thinks he can. Needless to say, he did himself an injury over the weekend, and I've been keeping an eye on him, because, from past experience, he won't look after it himself.

This is fine as long as I'm working from home, which I did today, but in the midst of something I was doing for work, he called to me, frantically, which, in Dan-speak means "come quickly! There's something really cool I want to show you!"

I was thinking,"awesome! Yesterday, I got off a couple of good shots of a kookaburra that was scratching for grubs in our lawn. There must be some kind of exotic bird out there," and so I grabbed my camera and ran to the kitchen window. You never know what you're going to find out there in our yard, in the country.

"Look," Dan pointed. "Why are there poodles in our yard?"

Poodles? I looked.

"Dan, those aren't poodles. They're goats. They must have wandered over from a neighbor's farm and are browsing the menu in our yard."

I grabbed my camera, wondering how close the goats would let me get to them before they took off. They were busily eating the fallen tree leaves and scrub brush and my presence didn't seem to bother them all that much. Goats have strange tastes. They were eating dried grass and twigs and ignoring the grapefruit that littered the ground.

I tried calling to them. I wondered how tame they were. The two young goats just ignored me and roamed our back yard, trying this leaf and that leaf, to see which ones were best. All was well until they got to my roses and started tasting the leaves.

"Oh, you naughty things!" I said, and tried to push their little mouths away from the rose bushes. Fortunately, the roses were spared, but only after I got to pet the little beasts. The smaller of the two of them seemed particularly fond of having his ears scratched, and so gave up his rose bush eating for some head scratching.

After a few minutes, they wandered back down the driveway, in the direction of, I hoped, their home. I was kind of sad to see them go.

I think I heard the small one say, as he trotted off my veranda: "so long, and thanks for dinner!"

Labels: goats

posted by Melanie O. at 9:28 PM -

4 Comments:

At 3:53 PM, Ann said…

Cute (except for eating the garden). Do they use the milk or make cheese. Love goats milk cheese - and yoghurt.
At 5:00 PM, Melanie O. said…

Not sure, Ann. They were quite soft and woolly, so maybe they're raised for wool?
At 10:45 AM, gardenbug said…

How darling. I want goats in my back yard, too. ..or at least a chicken.
At 3:33 PM, Melanie O. said…

This summer, I'm putting in a watering hole. Maybe we'll attract some koalas and wallabies.