It became obvious to me that we weren’t ever going to acquire any
livestock for The Farm With No Name, The cost of fencing is prohibitive and in the absence of same it was
decided to buy the girls a goat.
A goat.
“What’s the point of a goat?” I asked. You can’t ride it, milk it, eat
it or take it anywhere.
“No, but they’re good pets and will eat the grass. Millie wants a pet.”
he replied.
So the stupid goat came home in the front seat of the ute nursed on
Amelia’s knee. Now, I’m not sure how old this tiny goat was but it seemed to
form an unnatural attachment to Amelia with the loyalty of a blue heeler. When
she came home from school it ran in circles and stood to attention waiting for
her to play with it. When she walked away from it, it would “maaah” like an
abandoned baby and look longingly in the direction to which she’d disappeared.
On its first day under my guardianship, Denis went to Perth and his
parting words were, “Make sure you look after the goat.”
“Of course I’ll look after the bloody goat,” I replied indignantly. “Do you
think I’m useless?”
The first thing I heard the next morning was Amelia’s scream.
“The goat is gooooone.”
Now, technically I didn’t lose the goat. I wasn’t the one who tied it
up. It just happened to escape on my watch while I was slumbering in the night.
Obviously I should have been sitting on the verandah staring at the goat to
make sure it didn’t go anywhere. People would have written books about it. It’d
be folklore in the future. People would report sightings of the ghost of the
girl who stared at goats. You can see her lonely figure late at night through
the fog sitting on the south west corner of the verandah.
Sure enough, there was the lead with one end tied to the kennel and the
other end ragged and torn and lying, tragically, flat and lifeless on the
ground. We looked in and under and around the kennel. We walked around the
verandah. We called its name. But the goat hadn’t even had time to learn its
name. We’d only owned it for sixteen hours. Had it been so unhappy that it had
to flee immediately?
The anguish on Amelia’s face was excruciating and she cried all the way
to school, while I promised to find the goat (or vowed to buy it’s identical
twin brother if it couldn’t be located).
By 2pm I was getting frantic and I don’t know what the passengers
thought as Denis ranted from the airport terminal in Perth, “I knew you couldn’t
be trusted to look after the goat!”
In desperation I stood out on the airstrip and looked across the farm.
All around, the yellow summer grass was calf high. I wouldn’t find the goat in
a million years. I wouldn’t find a million goats in this grass.
And so I stood there and listened, willing the goat to pop up at my
feet. Come on goat. Where are you? The silence was sickening. Have you run out
on the road and been squashed? Have you been bitten by a snake and now lie
somewhere frothing at the mouth with blurring vision and gasping for your last
little bleating breath? Are you hiding? Has a fox got you? Have you expired now
in the midday sun, lost and alone and dehydrated? Am I bad mother? Will we find
your tiny carcass when we steamroll through the paddocks in lumbering great
machinery to cut the hay? Will the last roll by the front gate have your little
hooves poking out of its centre like some memorial to lost pets?
And then I heard a feeble and lost little “maah” from 100 metres away by
the woodheap on the neighbour’s boundary. I called for reinforcements. Our 70
year old neighbor who has a deep love for animals, set off on the quad bike to
interrogate his herd of sheep and an hour later, just before school pick-up,
returned victorious, cradling the little goat on the front of his bike.
I’d been spared the wrath of the child and the husband and the neighbor
handed him back, albeit reluctantly. Obviously we weren’t to be trusted with
animals.
As the goat grew, it was let off its very long lead and would go for a
walk up the airstrip with us, or trot around behind. It stood on the verandah
and looked longingly through the glass doors at the girls inside. On a few
occasions if the door was left open it would come inside and make itself at
home until I’d shoo it out. (This while we were still on bare concrete floors).
On a few more occasions, Kate would sneak it inside and claim, “I’m just trying
to get him out.”
When the girls hopped on the trampoline, the goat bounced too, its
floppy Namibian ears flapping as it became airborne, unperturbed but completely
focused on Amelia’s adoration. The goat thought it was human.
I came to love the goat. I loved its interaction with the girls and
admired its intelligence. I couldn’t bear to see it tied up so I’d let it off
to become a free-range goat. I feathered its nest and filled its bowl. I
marveled at its rich chestnut goat coat and winced when the neighbor neutered
it. I loved trotting around the garden with the goat. I took it to school for
show and tell. After all, we weren’t having any more babies. It stood in the
back of the ute with it’s head out one side, it’s floppy ears flapping in the
breeze.
It pooed on the verandah and weed wherever it wanted and I hosed and
disinfected the lot with the love and attention one gives to their first
pet-goat.
But then it started eating the trees. By the time we’d pulled out four
Chinese Elms from the front of the house, Denis refused to buy any more until
the goat was gone.
I was heart-broken. “Don’t take the goat,” I pleaded.
“Bloody goat’s gotta go,” he replied, “We’ll get chickens,” and before I
could say, “You can’t give and then take away a pet like that!” the goat was
rehoused to a lady on a farm up the road where it lived a pampered and
indulgent life surrounded by sheep and donkeys.
I never went to visit.
Denis took the girls regularly and each day driving home from school
they’d plead, “Can we go and see Coco?” but I’d keep driving.
“Nope. That’s your father’s job,” I’d say.
Then came the phone call no mother wants to receive.
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” the step-mother advised, “but the
goat has died in the early hours of this morning. I could see that he was down
and I called the vet. We think he might have been shot by spotlighters, who
mistook him for a fox. I’m so sorry. He was such a beautiful little goat.”
Yes. He was.
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