The Far Side

The day started with a giggle when the mouse in the grain bucket ran up under my shirt sleeve.  For an old gal, I did a pretty fast strip in the milking room as I tried to get the little booger with his tickling toes off me.  He ran up onto my head and did a rather spectacular swan dive off and landed (you guessed it) right back in the bucket.  This time I just tilted the bucket and let him find his own way out.

"Yes, sir.  Yes, sir.  Three bags full."  In this case, it wasn't wool the man asked about; it was goat poop.  I don't know why he asks, knowing that it is a constantly renewing resource, but Earle comes periodically for a truckload of fertilizer, and yesterday was the day.  I can't seem to convince him that this is a job that should be done early in the day and that I need a heads up so I don't open that field for the girls in the morning.  Ah, well.  I grabbed an armload of dry oak leaves and the girls came running like little kids hearing the Good Humor truck while Earle went down the other fence line to close the gate.  (Are there any Good Humor men left?)  The goats pushed and shoved to crunch and munch on the leaves and ignored Earle.  My job with goat poop ends when I pitch the bucketful over the fence.  I left Earle to it and went back in the house to wrap Christmas presents for Deb and Craig.

Gary Larson would have had a fount of inspiration for his cartoons here.  "The Far Side" would be my side.  Three of us in a queen-size bed, and I am clinging to the edge, in danger of being pushed off.  Bessie Anne is not a large dog, but in the night she takes on the proportions of a Great Dane, stretching out and shoving me with her feet.  Pearl (and Pearl is a story I'm not ready to write yet) wants warmth and physical contact and so curls up as close to me as she can get and won't move.  Not wishing to disturb her, I can't move either.  And there I am, on The Far Side.