Attribution: Photo by Nataliya Melnychuk on Unsplash
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, is not much help to the keeper as he investigates what is apparently a genetic quirk on his father’s side of the family that manifests itself in a fondness for goats.
As a boy growing up out on the North Dakota prairie the keeper’s father had a pet goat to pull him around in a little wooden wagon, and as a boy growing up on a small Wisconsin dairy farm the keeper enjoyed the company of a family goat named Snowball who taught the keeper a few things about climbing, like on top of the machine shed.
Snowball came to a sad end when he developed the habit of following the cows out into the pasture and helping himself to the ready supply of fresh milk. A cow-sucking goat has no place on a dairy farm and so Dad said Snowball would have to be sold, but he added that the keeper and his sister and brother could have the money from the sale. It was with mixed emotions that the three of them watched Snowball ride away in the back of a cattle dealer’s pickup while they tried to figure out how to make a three-way split of 75-cents.
The keeper solicits information from other clan members about any indication of an urge to have a goat in their lives.
In the meantime, he will be talking to Phyllis about applying to Vista West to keep a goat out on one of the balconies. There is room and since goats will eat anything there would be minimum expense as the goat eats some of the keeper’s clutter that Phyllis complains about.
The keeper will let everyone know who gets whose goat first and truly hopes it will be him.
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