Bill the Goat

   Lester came home from a visit one time with Mildred and her kids in Minnesota with a young billy goat in the hatch or trunk of his 1929 Ford Coupe in some sort of a crate. That was Bill the goat. Agile and mischievous he definitely he was. One time we left a ladder on our double corn crib and Wayne looked up and there Bill was standing astraddle the peak of the roof looking down at him at least twenty five foot in the air. We didn’t know how to get him down so I guess we figured he would figure out a way. He did he just walked down to the lowest part at the eaves that was about eight high and jumped down. He did the same thing one time on the house when we had a ladder up on it. He could climb a ladder but he couldn’t go down one. He got up on everything that he could. That included cars which made him very unpopular around home. It didn’t do much for finish on the car fenders, hoods and roofs when he jumped up on them and walked around. That is probably the reason we didn't go get him when he decided to take up residence at the neighbors. I guess that you might say that we didn’t renew his lease. He would open the gate and let the calves out so he could run and frolic with them, like jumping clear over the top of them. Of course he too was a great butter, however his butts didn’t have the jolt nor compare with old Buck’s. Old buck, the sheep, hated Bill with a passion, because he was so quick and agile the he couldn’t get near him. He really tormented that poor old buck sheep, old Buck would just stand around and grit his teeth which was what he did when he was annoyed at something. No doubt his was thinking I’ll get you sooner or later you young smart aleck. Us kids had a great time playing with that ornery son of a gun, he followed us around like a dog and if you set down he was always poking you gently with a horn or butting at you. He liked to follow the horses and wagon like a dog too. That was the thing that ended up spelling his doom. One day he followed Harold with the team of horses and wagon and he decided to stop off at a neighbor a mile north of us where he decided to take up residence. The neighbor got in touch with us but we decided that he was getting too much for us, so another neighbor took him and turned him into goat meat. So that was the end of Bill the goat. We also had a younger buck sheep I guess he didn’t have a name. Old Buck and him would spend hours backing up about thirty feet and crashing head on into each other like the Big Horn sheep do. Sometimes the younger buck would go down to his knees but he would just shake his head and get up and do it again. I remember Mom had some visitors one time and they asked her what that thudding noise was. Oh that’s just the sheep fighting Mom said. Lester was always coming home with  some different kind of animals, he had four or five white domestic ducks and six or eight domestic mallard ducks. The times when the ducks were not popular was when they decided to use the livestock water tank for their swimming pool, riling up the settlings in the bottom of the tank plus leaving a bunch of feathers etc. behind. The livestock wouldn’t drink until the dirt etc settled. He also came home one time with three or four Guinea fowls. They were supposed to be tame but they were really wild. They looked like gray hump backed chickens and made a lot of noise, flew to the top of the barn and roosted at night in the tops of some big tall maple trees in our grove. I would guess those trees to be about eighty feet tall.

To continue reading click here.  Part #5 - More Chores and Wash Day