Stupid Is...

Making supper last night, I opened a jar of pasta sauce, only to have my daughter grab the jar and scrutinize the label. "Mom!" she exclaimed, "You can't use this! It has HFC in it!"

"H-F-what?"

According to my health-conscious teenagers, it is no longer enough to monitor sugar, salt, and saturated fats. We also need to avoid HFC, or high fructose corn syrup, a component in nearly everything I buy in a jar (jams, sauces, pancake syrup, salad dressing...). Megan informed me that consumption of this common ingredient must be avoided because "it makes you stupid."

"How can that be?" I asked, "I've been eating this stuff for years."

(And yet, I do have goats...Surely there is no correlation?)

Apparently, Megan claims, the "stupidity" side-effect has been scientifically proven by experiments with mice. Rodents who were fed HFC eventually lost their ability to find their way out of a maze. (My suspicion is this - maybe the test mice, suddenly fed a diet of hot-fudge sauce and blackberry jam, didn't want to leave the maze. Hey Stuart, this new food sure beats dry nuts and seeds! Let's just keep wandering around in here and get the good stuff!)

Back to the goats...here's how I know that something in our diet is decreasing general intelligence. Whenever friends, relatives or complete strangers learn that we have goats, they always want to know first whether our pets have the foul "stink" for which bucks are known. I explain that Em and Ellie are neutered males, and therefore devoid of noxious odors. Invariably, the next question is, "Do you milk them?"

Really??? In what alternate universe do we milk male livestock? 

My goats are two of quadruplets. My own daughters, twins. Once, a woman in an elevator peered at my identically-dressed toddlers in their double stroller and commented, "They don't really look alike. Are you sure they're twins?" (Well, yes, I actually am...)

More recently, a school classmate chatted with both girls (one blonde, one brunette; one fair-skinned and freckled to her sister's darker complexion). "I never realized you were twins!" he remarked. "Are you identical or fraternal?"

Maybe we all need to stop eating HFC!!

My Beautiful Goat

This morning the goats both had bloody heads. That's right - black fur, white patches, and between the ears, sticky with red. The first time this happened (a year or so ago), I was fraught with panic, grabbing the first aid bucket and the emergency vet number. Now I'm just relieved that their head-butting game has likely saved me the trouble of wrenching off Elliot's latest scur, or overgrown horn bud, which was growing ominously downward toward his skull. A quick check confirmed my suspicions that the blood was all Ellie's, and all he needed was a spritz of blukote to ward off the flies swarming his wound. Anyway, there are way worse things than a broken scur.

Last month my husband remarked, "Elliot looks so good lately - his coat is perfect!"  Yes, I wanted to shout, he looks amazing - because I fixed him!! This pristine goat with his sleek fur and flawless skin is indeed the same animal who vexed us for a year and a half with a horrendous skin condition resistant to all treatments, including (but not limited to) topical and injected parasectisides, antibiotics, steroids, anti-fungal powder, skin scrapings, multiple biopsies under anesthesia, evaluation by an Ivy League veterinary school, massage therapy, lime sulfur baths, the wearing of socks and t-shirts and the "cone of shame." Nothing worked, no clear diagnosis could be made, and when last winter hit with its bitter ferocity, I just gave up.

Then spring came, and I tried something new, and I cured him.

I wanted to gloat, to tell everyone I knew, to call my vets and my farmer friends and write a blog about this amazing thing. Come see my beautiful goat, I would gleefully offer to everyone who had known him at his worst, all mangy and itchy and scabby. I could brag a little... and I should have, before my window of opportunity closed once again.

I bought a little wooden table at a yard sale a few weeks ago, thinking how much fun the goats would have jumping on and off it. Well, apparently Elliot had a bit too much fun with it, stretching his front legs over the table and then rubbing his belly rhythmically up and down over the edge. By the time I realized what he was doing and got my husband to hold him upside down for an examination, Elliot had rubbed himself so raw that a very critical part of his "boy-goat" anatomy was in peril of detachment from his body. (That's right - due to his earlier neutering, he only has one "boy-goat" part left, and it is not one a male of any species can afford to lose.) The table is gone, the first aid bucket is back, and poor Elliot is once again subject to daily wound treatments with betadine and antibiotic creams and all that...

So come see my beautiful goat. (Just don't look too closely underneath.) And pray I can fix this problem too.

Happy Crappy

At the camp where Emily works, all staff attend a required meeting each Friday evening after the campers depart for home. This is a time to debrief, share stories of the week, collect paychecks - but mostly, for "Happy Crappy."  As Emily explained, "Happy Crappy" is when counselors, lifeguards and cooks alike share the best - and worst - moments of their week. For example, Emily's "crappy" was when she misjudged the gas stove and burnt eleven gallons of tomato soup half an hour before lunch, while another fellow on the kitchen staff shared his "happy" as two hours spent cleaning the oven with Emily...because of the inspiring conversation. I may need to ask for more details here...

So, what if the goats played this game? Perhaps I'd overhear some dialogue from their shed...

"What's your happy today, Elliot?"

"Well, the hot bucket was steaming today, brother - and then when you butted her while she was dripping in the vinegar and she spilled in half the bottle - I loved that!"

"Yeah, that was pretty tricky of me..."

"And how the dad person brushed me all over and then I shook flakes all into the bucket of fresh water and she yelled and got so mad 'cause she had to refill it - that was so funny!!"

"I thought the animal crackers after breakfast were especially delicious today, and the dried orange peels for our afternoon snack - mmmmm! And then she miscounted and gave us each three pods instead of two...and we got watermelon rinds for dessert!"

"Oh yeah, the best. But I think my happy is the same as every day - I know, I know, but we can both have the same happy!"

"I just love the afternoon walk too, brother. Those weeds by the creek , and the crunchy leaves, and how we hurtle down the hill so fast! I ate so many raspberries today - maybe even more than she picked - and she didn't even push me away from the plants. Best hour of my day."

"So, what's your crappy, brother?"

(Silence)

"Me neither."

Sometimes I wish I was a goat.

Tools of Intimidation

Last year, a visiting young man (friend of my daughter) stepped into our garage while my husband was testing his new circular saw. Eager to show off his new toy (since his own daughters are more interested in eyelash curlers and knitting needles than cordless drills or belt sanders), my husband asked the young man to hold a piece of wood while he operated the blade. My daughter's friend quickly backed away, saying "Oh, no - tools intimidate me!" Strike one for that potential suitor!

Power tools can be dangerous, no question.  Nearly every piece of equipment in our garage is covered with dire warnings and graphic illustrations of severed body parts. Somehow my husband still sports ten fingers, yet the tool which recently sent him to the emergency room was not his sandblaster or grinder, but a tiny bungee cord which sprung off a car trunk with the force of a thousand pythons, the metal hook on its end slamming him in the eye. Excellent medical care saved his vision, but since then I give bungee cords a wide berth...

Goats come with their own unique hazards as well. I have reconstituted and administered a caustic medication which, undiluted, actually ate through a metal mixing bowl. Razor-sharp trimmers could slice off a finger just as easily as a chunk of hoof tissue, and anyone who's ever tried to wrangle an eighty-pound goat for an injection knows the needle can go anywhere. However, my own most serious caprine-related injuries have come from an incongruous source -  household brooms, which I use for eight to ten hours each day to sweep away goat droppings. First I developed a painful bone spur on my left hand from the repetitive motion, and more recently I sported my own ocular bruise after being attacked by a dozen or so brooms in a nearby hardware store.

Like a familiar dance partner, I loved my old broom - but with the handle rusted and duct-taped together and the bristles worn down to nubs, it was time to say farewell. Reluctantly I entered a local business (where I knew the owners and most of the staff) to choose a replacement. What happened next was something like a Stephen King version of a house of cards, but with haunted brooms. I had just pulled one down from the overhead wall display when suddenly all of the brooms descended on me in an avalanche of wood and bristles - "Pick me! Pick me!" Though luckily I was the sole customer in the store, this freed all six of the staff to come to my aid as I extricated myself from the pile of giant pick-up-sticks; one kind clerk (a classmate of my daughters - not the one intimidated by tools, thank goodness!) brought me an ice pack for my bruised eye.

The worst part was that I couldn't even purchase a broom, as they were all of the "natural-material" variety where the bristles look like straw and are therefore edible to goats. Maybe I'll just keep using my old plastic broom after all.