Why You Should Never Run Ahead of a Goat...

Taking the goats for their evening walk is a complex process. Two people are required (though three is ideal). Below our house is the perfect spot for a leisurely stroll - a meandering creek bordered by a smorgasbord of trees, weeds and poison ivy. My husband mows a wide path through the tall grass to create a maze through which no goat can escape except at each end.The goats munch along the trail, filling their  bellies while the girls and I wander behind them. It's a bit like Dorothy's "yellow brick road" to the magical Emerald City.

The real challenge, however, is getting there. To reach the path, we need to lure the goats past the vegetable garden, the driveway and a pile of scrap metal. We devised a system where we open their gate, then run down the hill, shrieking and waving our arms in an attempt to convince the goats that we know something they don't - that they should follow us past all those temptations to get to wherever we are going. Usually it works well. Em and Ellie hurtle down the hill after us, leaping sideways and kicking up their feet in glee.

Occasionally something goes horribly wrong.

Recently Megan and I decided to walk the goats. She is more agile and a faster runner than I am, so she disappeared into the maze while I was still halfway down the hill, goats chasing behind me. Oh no! Megan got there first! She might eat all the good weeds! Speed up, brother! Faster! Desperate to reach the woods, Elliot plowed into me from behind, the full force of his seventy-pound caprine bulk impacting the back of my right knee, catapulting me into the air as he hurtled past. It was several minutes before I could haul myself upright, remember who I was and why I was lying in a field, and stagger to the trail where Megan was supervising two happily-munching goats.

"Megan!" I admonished my daughter. "Why didn't you come help me? Didn't you hear me calling for you when Ellie bowled me over?"

"Oh, was that you?" she asked. "I wondered what that loud whooomph sound was!"

And once again I ask myself, why do we have goats?