Hot Buckets

Another photo from the past - the pre-cone days, the phase when the goats regularly consumed cardboard boxes (no idea why Ellie is wearing this one) and when they ate hay from two red buckets, instead of the larger tubs we use now. Ellie used to stuff his face down to the bottom of the bucket, where the tastiest hay apparently went, but he kept getting the metal handle stuck on his head, so we stopped using the buckets for hay.

The buckets have a new use now - a handy replacement for the teapot. The boys could  slurp down all the hot water from the teapot in a minute - we needed a larger container for steaming hot water - something like the bucket, and somehow it became "hot bucket" - as in "Come back to your pen, you stupid goats - Apples! Sunflower seeds! Hot bucket!"

And then we spontaneously break out into the "hot bucket" jingle, adapted from the television commercial for the pocket-shaped frozen/microwaveable sandwiches ("hot pockets"). It wasn't even that funny the first fifty or so times, but still we sing...Sometimes you have to find the humor anywhere you can.