Smokey Mountain Breakdown

Life has just been so busy recently.

Today it warmed up just enough to go out and not feel brutalized by the cold. I've had a bad cold that started as allergies and then settled in my head, so I've been feeling a bit more pitiful than usual. I don't usually moan this much about the cold.

I took BossyToe out with her bottle to play with the herd. The kids have formed their own troupe of wildly jumping and twisting little Cirque du Soleil performers. BossyToe needs to find her goathood. Bridey doesn't have this problem since she still sees her mom and brother on a daily basis and can relate to being a goat. BossyToe thinks she's a person. She thinks she looks like I do.

The sun came out for a little while. I sat on the hillside with the herd around me and let BossyToe drink from her bottle. She can down 15 ounces in 30 seconds and still be hungry. Pearlie came over and tried to steal a few sips from the bottle. Yes, goats like milk. Some goats will even suck themselves.

It felt so peaceful there that I laid back, just meaning to close my eyes for a second.

And got attacked by my geese. I now have a very painful bruise on my left arm where the little bastard got me before I could grab him. These are big Embden geese. All of the other animals are afraid of them...including the dogs. One of them cornered Fat Buddy when he was on one of his egg stealing raids and viciously plucked beak-fulls of fluffy black dog hair out of F.B.'s butt before I could rescue him. Fat Buddy was making that dreadful screaming dog noise as he waddled hurriedly back to the house.

I've always loved the company of animals. I've always been tenderhearted. But I'm tenderhearted about people, too...and I think that just barely keeps me from crossing the line into crazy dog ladydom.

There was one hideous fiasco of a birthday party when I was about six or so. My mother had arranged to take a big group of my little friends and me to see a movie. This was back when they still had the balls to slap on a tragic ending onto a kid's movie.

My mother knew by this time that I was an overly-sensitive child. I hid my eyes in abject terror every time the flying monkeys appeared in Wizard of Oz. The burial scene in The Three Lives of Thomasina where they sang Danny Boy over the dead cat sent me into great gulping paroxysms of grief that could only end when I projectile vomited all over the nearest adult.

I have no idea why my mother didn't have the foresight to read the synopsis of Ring of Bright Water before subjecting me to that film. I vividly remember having to be carried out of the movie theater howling in grief. The fact that Mij's offspring lived on did absolutely nothing to console me to Mij's tragic death at the hands of the ditchdigger. I had nightmares about ditches for months. I couldn't look at a ditch for years without imagining greasy swirls of otter blood. Circle of freakin' life, my ass.

I have remembered Ring of Bright Water my entire life. And have never had the guts to watch it again. It was that traumatic.

I've developed enough of a skin to live my life without going completely mad. Because I had to. Just to survive.

But it's another reason why I live how I live. Where I live.

The skin is thin in places. And the howling is close by.