Who's Fluffy Now?

Cold weather...first frost warning of the season...as I haul tubs of sweaters and mittens up from the basement, I pray the goats will develop winter coats thick enough to keep them warm for the next few months. (Plan B is to fence off a small corner of the living room...)

Emily noticed several weeks ago that when she went out to see the goats on chilly mornings, they seemed extra "fluffy." I disregarded this claim as goat-triggered insanity, but one morning Megan went outside too and when she came in she exclaimed, "It's true! I got to see them fluffy!" Well, now they are fluffy all the time with puffed-up, coarser fur. Something must be working, because instead of spending these frosty nights in their warmer, protected shed, they still sleep on the roof.

I could worry about this. Emily (who spends a lot of time on the internet learning generally-useless information) recently informed me that the leading cause of death in one North African country is people accidentally rolling off their roofs at night. Apparently the houses there are built from cinder blocks, which retain heat, and so  people often sleep outside (on the roof) to stay cool. I had many questions about this, naturally. Are the roofs flat, or sloped? Why do they build with cinder blocks if heat is such an issue? (It's not like they are a naturally-occurring crop in that region!) Are they sleeping in the center of the roof, or the edges? Do their animals sleep up there too? Having slept for the past many decades in a bed and never rolled out, I find this a sad yet puzzling statistic.

Just to be safe, however, maybe I'll buy some trampolines and set them up around goat shed...except the rascals would probably figure out a way to get enough bounce to vault themselves over the fence into the front yard...I'll have to think about this a bit.