Blame It On the Heat

Heat makes me cranky (or as Joel calls it, crotchety).  I have to dig deep to find any patience.  An act of kindness yesterday snapped me out of it.

Sweating like a horse, all I wanted was to get finished in the barn.  Five down, one to go - there was light at the end of this hot tunnel.  I'd noted Sheila up in the tree before, and she didn't come when I called her, so I grabbed the rope and went around the corner of the barn to get her - and almost had a coronary!  A man, a stranger, was walking toward me from behind the barn.  He was one of Joel's crew, and hurriedly explained he had seen the goat in the tree and he saw the wire fencing (that we'd put up to keep the girls from dancing out on the roof of the barn) and thought she'd gotten caught up there.  He was coming to her rescue.  Aside from the fact that he'd scared the snot out of me, I thanked him profusely.  It wasn't easy for him to get over the seven- or eight-foot deer fence to come help a goat in trouble.  Had it really been a problem and I wasn't right there, I couldn't have heard her from the house.  Sheila, by this time, had jumped out of the tree and was standing by my side.  The young man got himself back over the fence, I milked Sheila, and it was a happy ending for all of us.