Goat Escape

    I just love looking out into our back yard and seeing three goats roaming freely.

   Well, not really.  But I'm getting used to it.


    Before we had goats I didn't realize how common it was for them to escape their enclosure, but for a while it seemed like that was an almost daily occurrence.  This could mostly be explained by an over-zealous duo of goat-herders.  For the record, they never "let" the goats out, the goats have always been able to find their way out of the open gate by themselves.  We've managed to get this issue mostly under control by threatening severe consequences--selling the goats--if the gate continued to mysteriously be left open.  Since then the goats have for the most part remained penned and G has only had to come home from work for a wild goat chase once.

   However, they do find a way to escape occasionally and the other morning was one such instance.  GD had gotten it in his head that he HAD to build them a new fence on that particular day.  We had gone upstairs to get dressed so we could head outside and start working on said fence when I looked out the window to see a goat grazing happily in our backyard.

   I've learned a few things about rounding up rogue goats.  Before we had goats (it's almost like I'm dividing my life into two chapters, "Before We Had Goats," and "Life Since Owning Goats"), I assumed that goats could be corralled much like they do in the movies.  Except that I've never seen a movie in which goats are corralled.  And if I had I probably wouldn't have paid much attention.  The boys do have a book called "The Great Goat Escape," in which they finally get the goats out of a turnip field by having them stung in the bottom by a tiny bee, which I guess is always an option.  But I think if I had to guess how goats would be herded based on movies, I would have said it could be done much like Babe herds sheep, calmly and rationally.  The first time the goats escaped while G was not around to help I tried to do just that.  I didn't let the boys around the goats so as to not rile them and led the calmly to their pen with some feed.  Except they didn't really care about the feed because they had a garden full of weeds to satisfy them.  I've actually learned the best way to get a goat escape under control is to turn the boys loose on them to chase them wildly around the yard until the goats return home begging for mercy and water.

   So, the other morning when I saw the goats far from the enclosure of their pen, I mobilized the troops.

   "Boys!  We have a big problem!  The goats escaped!"  They both sprinted outside, still in their pajamas, or in the case of the toddler, a diaper and mud boots.  While the two boys and three goats ran laps around the barn, I went inside to get my tools to fix the fence.

There's a couple things about living in a house full of tool-obsessed males.
1.  You have a large collection of tools and even a nice pink tool box to keep them all in because that's what they give you for every Christmas, birthday, and Mother's Day.
2.  You never know where any of your tools are because the only reason they gave you the tools was so that they could have an extra set inside the house.

So that is why, when I searched my big pink tool chest for some sort of device to fix the goat fence, despite owning two cordless drills and a few sets of drill bits, the best I could come up with was a screwdriver (which happens to be purple and say "Property of Mom" right on it which was probably why it was left alone).

When I made it back outside the goats were being wearily led through their gate by a proud 4-year-old, who watered them, shut and locked gate, and then examined the enclosure to discover the where the breech occurred.  I set to work finding hardware and repairing the fence while the boys fulfilled their need to build a new goat fence by arranging snow fence in the yard and strewing several measuring tapes across it.  And then taking my screwdriver.

Our repairs to the fence seem to hold.  At least until a few days later when my husband looked out into the yard and asked, "Why are the goats out?"