Smokey Mountain Breakdown

Goats-911...Please clearly state your goat emergency and stay on the line....

So, I come back from a trip down the mountain to fill up my brand new tire that is already leaking air to find a message from a nice woman from down the 15th. There's a goat on a ledge midway between here and old Tillman's store. She assumes it's mine. It's not.

So, we get in touch and I drive down there. Sure enough, there's a Boer/New Zealand cross doe across the creek. Not sure how she got there. I get out and make sympathetic goat calls to her. Yes, I'm standing in the middle of a country road calling "Blaaaah. Blaaah." Me, being something of a junior goat whisperer, though nothing compared to the Goat Yoda--said goat looks across the rushing creek and answers me. She's saying something like, "Hey! I'm stuck over here and I can't get back! Hows about cluing me into how I got here in the first place."

Goats are like that. Every day's a new day to a goat. Actually, every five minutes is a new five minutes to a goat. Sort of like that thing about goldfish having a 2 and a half second span of short term memory. She's fifty feet up a laurel covered stretch of rotten rock, wet and hating it.

The nice woman and I meet on the stretch of road--we try to figure out who she might belong to. Chief suspect is the old Raines place--now rehabilitated with nice new sheds and a horse. But no one is home. There's six strand barbwire fencing--but if you know goats--well, that's just a dandy way to get your ass scratched. We agree she'll come down when she's good and ready and there's really nothing we can do.

I turn around and head back--and while we were talking, the doe has found her way back onto the main road. I stop and make more sympathetic goat noises. She's real friendly and lets me get quite close--just not close enough to grab her horns. I get the feeling she's new around here--not sure where home is. But she sure does like the goat noises I'm lobbing in her direction. Shows me her rear end like I'd be interested. I drive slowly and she follows the jeep, but gives up when a friendly horse in the pasture makes goo-goo eyes at her. Fickle damn goats. One moment they are your best buddy and the next they are running after the first pretty horse that comes along.