When a Good Day Goes Bad

Yesterday (Sunday) started out in a very promising fashion.  We had a nice relaxing morning, then drove into McKinney to pick up our youngest granddaughter (age 6). DH, granddaughter Georgia, and I had a nice lunch at Olive Garden where I ran into an old friend that I hadn’t seen in 4 years and made plans for her to bring her daughter out to the Farm in a couple of weeks. Then we went over to Home Depot to buy DH a new weed eater, a couple of mouse traps, and some electrical do-dads that I need to fix the wires on one of the box fans in the barn.

It was not until we got home that things went south.

First, we realized Bear was loose. I’ve never had such a big dog that digs so well and can get out through such a shallow space.  We saw him wandering around in the unfenced area in the back.  Ken went after him on foot, and I grabbed Georgia and headed down the road to cut him off.

And that’s when things got worse.

Driving down our fence line we found a goat with his head stuck through the fence and a blade of grass in his mouth. It was immediately evident however, that he was too still. Georgia and I drove on in what turned out to be a futile attempt to entice Bear to come home. We didn’t spend very long on it; the goat took priority.

By the time I got back, Ken had the goat in the wagon. One of the wethers. Only a year and a few months old.  What on earth had happened? I beat myself up about it the rest of the evening and most of the night. No signs of struggle. No bites or swelling. He still had a blade of grass in his mouth, so he hadn’t bleated in distress. The heat? Perhaps, but he wasn’t wet, so he hadn’t been out there long, and the rain had actually cooled things down a little bit. Heart attack? stroke? We’ll never know.

It is the ultimate irony that the goat’s demise was precipitated by his eating grass through the fence on the very day we purchased a heavy duty weed eater with which to cut down that very grass, a tall patch in a bar ditch where the mower can’t go.  It is cold comfort that it won’t happen again; Ken stayed home from work this morning long enough to figure out the new weed eater and cut the grass.

And Bear? He finally came home by himself, and The Welder is supposed to make it out here sometime today to weld pipe to the gate posts at ground level.  Pipe is the only thing we’ve found so far that Bear can’t move out of the way.

I’ll be shaking me head all day, going back and forth between sad and mad. It was a stupid circumstance to which to lose an animal. Maybe the washer repairman will have good news, but I’m not holding my breath.