Chapter 3:  Goats

(A continuation of the “Flood of 1919” story)

                You are probably wondering what goats have to do with the “Flood of 1919” story.  Well, don’t be so antsy:  It will all come out in the wash (pun intended).

                First, let me tell you all I know about goats:  They stink; they don’t like to get their feet wet; they are creatures of habit; they love green plums; cheese made from their milk is terrible; you cannot ride them  and, if given the chance, they will jump on your car.

                My daughter’s mother-in-law kept goats.  Every time Laura went to visit, they would jump on her car – and you think cats leave footprints!

                I own a 2 ½ acre lot at a pretty neat setting.  This is not where my house is located, but I have a garden there.  It is just across the fence from the public park.  There is a walking trail around the perimeter of the park, and there is a scope of trees between the trail and my fence, so you really do not notice it from the park.  The entrance to my lot is via a dim, gravel road that goes through an overcrowded pine plantation.  Pine trees and hardwoods along the roadside grow over it to form a bower.  The road runs arrow-straight, makes an “S”  turn then forks, with the right fork continuing through another scope of woods to dead-end at an old farm house and the left fork breaking into a beautiful, sunny pasture, about 60 acres in size, that was once a dairy farm.  The developer named it “Parkside Subdivision,” but it never developed.  There is only one house in the pasture.  It is an old farmhouse, built in the 1890’s that some yuppies re-located to the site and added on to.

                The pine plantation, through which my entry road runs, is owned by a late-middle-aged lady named “Mary Jane.”  She is a retired Army nurse who moved back home to care for an elderly aunt, who lived in an old farm house that faced the main public road, from which my gravel entry road turns. There are some barns and other farm outbuildings behind the dwelling house.  When the aunt died, Mary Jane built a modern brick house between the farm house and barns and deep in the pine plantation.  It cannot be seen from the paved road, and is nearly invisible from the gravel one.  She has her privacy.

                Some “maiden ladies” keep cats.  Mary Jane has a couple of these and a dog or two, but mainly she keeps donkeys – and goats.  I don’t know why; she just does.

                Mary Jane once drove past a local Mennonite farm and saw a sign reading “Goat Carts for Sale.”  Now, what goat lover could resist such a thing?  She stopped to investigate.  The cart was such a cute little thing!  It was a handmade two-wheeled beauty, gaily painted with a padded and well- sprung seat just for one.  She sat in it, and it was just her size.  She had to have it!  She explained to the farmer that she had some goats  she could train to pull it.  The farmer said that probably wasn’t a good idea, because goats are notoriously hard to train, and it would take her a long time.  Why didn’t she just buy a trained pair from him?  He hooked up the team to the cart and told her to take it for a spin.  She did, and wrote him a check on the spot – for the cart AND goats.

                She just couldn’t wait to try it out!  She borrowed a friend’s cattle trailer to get her purchase home.  She unloaded it in her front yard, eagerly hitched the team to the cart, climbed aboard, flicked her whip and said “Giddy-up, Goats.”  And they did.  She felt just like Theodore Roosevelt trotting through the streets of Boston in his dog-cart as she headed down the dirt road.  What joy! – until her goats behind her house saw them and started bleating.  Mary Jane’s team heard and saw the other goats, made an abrupt left turn, overturned the cart, spilling her on the road, and went through the bard-wire fence, trailing the remains of the cart after them.

                She learned why the Army has a mule as its mascot and left the goat to the Navy.

                My Grandfather Anderson had goats.  They stayed around the old store building, which had been fenced into the pasture across the road from the house.  Goats (as are deer) are more browsing animals than grazers, that is, they prefer to eat vines, tender buds, young tree shoots, wild fruit, etc.  Cook’s goats stretched their necks between the barbed-wire strands of the fence and browsed the vegetation as far outside as they could reach.  He had the cleanest fence row in the community. 

                When I was a kid (again, no pun intended), wild plums grew prolifically along roadsides, fence rows, etc.  We don’t see them much anymore.  I wonder what happened. The ripe fruit is delicious eaten fresh and makes  great jelly and jam.  But green, they were as sour as my seventh-grade English teacher’s disposition.  Goats relished the green fruit.  Plum trees, growing just beyond the goats’ reach, were filled with green fruit In the early summer and my cousins or friends and I would pick them and hand feed them to the goats.

                My Daddy decided I need to experience some of the joys of his childhood, which, I guess, included goat riding.  My mother was not with us, or she would have squelched the notion.  Daddy caught an old billy goat, held him steady, and I climbed on.  Daddy turned lose, and the goat made about three steps forward, stretched out his front legs and lowered his head to the ground.  I slid down his neck like a sliding board and he licked me in the face.  After the third attempt, with the same results, we gave up.  What’s that Einstein said about people who keep trying the same thing and expect different results?

                We returned home, and I took one step in the front door, when my mother, who had the world’s sharpest nose, and everything to her stank, shouted from the kitchen, “What is that horrible odor?  It smells like a goat.” When she discovered it was me, she marched me back outside, and made me remove my clothes on the front porch.  She immediately put them in the washing machine and banished me to the bath tub.

                Now about the goats in the Flood of 1919: (I told you to be patient.)

                Wiley Emmons had a flock (or is it herd?) of goats.  They browsed about in the swamp across the road from the house, and he called them home each night to give them some corn or other treat to keep them from going ferrell.  At the sound of his “Here, goats,” they would trot up to get their treat and spend the night in or around the barn, then return to swamp at daybreak to browse.  They always took EXACTLY the same route, through a little swale, and their hoofs had beaten out a well-defined trail.

When the river began to flood in 1919, the water rose rapidly – with the goats in the swamp.  Wiley called them, and they came a-running toward the barn – until they encountered the swale, which was now full of water. There was high ground on either side, and all they had to do was to go around, but no matter how much Wiley called, cajoled or held out treats, they refused to cross the swale or even to alter their path slightly to go around it.  They just stood there, bleating, as the water continued to rise, until they all drowned.

Well, as my hero and fellow idiot, Forrest Gump,  used to say, “That’s all I’ve got to say about that.”