The Things You'll Do for Love...

What would you do for those you love?

Hopefully you wouldn't push someone out a window (literary reference, if you're confused), but where do you draw the line? Would you give up your dining room table? Would you dig through a smelly trash can? Humiliate yourself in front of a roomful of people?

That's the thing about goats...

Recently I was lamenting to my mom that I was almost out of dried orange peels (Em and Ellie's most favorite snack). Citrus season is just starting, and I had exhausted the supply stored in the basement from last winter. Since peels are part of their daily routine and an effective way to entice them to drink their water, this was a serious problem!

Fast forward to last Wednesday night, when I was helping with childcare for an English-language class at church. After the session, I brought the children to their parents and was delighted to see that the evening snack had been oranges - hence an entire trash can full of orange peels (among other things...) I didn't even hesitate, immediately sorting through the garbage to rescue the treasured treats.

Suddenly the room was very quiet, as all the parents watched their children's teacher forage for discarded food scraps. "Oh, not for me," I explained, simultaneously attempting to pantomime a goat while switching to my feeble high school Spanish. And while I now know that the Spanish translation for goat is la cabra, and eating is comer, what I actually said (instead of "My goats eat them") was either "I am eating a herd of wild horses" or "the mackerel is itchy" (depending on the inflection).

It was one of my four-year old students who broke the stunned silence and saved the day. Unfazed by the stares of the adults in the room, he lunged forward and pointed to a mound of peels in the very bottom of the clear trash bag. "You miss one! You miss one!" As his horrified mother (holding her newborn) watched, he dove into the trash with me.

Right. We can always wash our hands...I smiled at his enthusiasm, knowing that my dining room table would that night be covered with trays of drying citrus, and my goats would be happy for a week.

I'm sure Emerson and Ellie would have done the same for me!