This goat is your goat, this goat is my goat
As often happens, Robin and I were driving along this weekend and discussing why cows like to climb piles of manure.
We had just passed a small farm and had noticed various bovines clamoring in their empty-skulled way for chief position atop a giant pile of their own feces, much like Snoopy sleeping on the roof of his own doghouse. It struck me as compelling.
“Cows really like to stand on top of crap,” I said.
“Yes,” Robin agreed.
“I wonder why.”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but they can be vicious about it. Everyone wants to be on top.”
I nodded. “Just like congress.”
“Horses do it too. Except that they sometimes kind of sink into it.”
I frowned. “I’ve never done that. Climbed poo, I mean.”
“Goats like to do it too. Climb things. Our goat, she liked to climb the manure piles and just hang out at the top.”
Many of you might have expressed doubt at this point, but I did not. I knew all about goats. My mom’s friend used to have a goat, but she had to get rid of it because it kept standing on her car. This story had always fascinated me. I’d heard plenty of reasons for getting rid of animals before — bit the neighbor, scratched the furniture, wouldn’t stop peeing on the rug — but this one was so unique and fascinating. I could just picture this woman getting ready for work, maybe in a nice semi-casual suit with her hair up, and imagine her walking out to the car to find a goat standing on it. “Oh for Christ’s sake!” she might yell. “How am I supposed to land the Henderson account with a goat on my car?”
“Cows, I don’t understand,” Robin said. ” But I can understand goats climbing. You know, with mountain goats and all.”
“So you’re saying that goats who climb manure are just following a biological urge to climb a mountain?”
“Maybe.”
“Like you’d ask a goat why he climbed the manure, and he’d say, ‘Because it was there.’?”
Robin had begun chewing on a fingernail. “He’d probably actually say, ‘Baaah.’ ”
“That’s what sheep say.”
“Goats say it too,” she told me.
“No, they say, ‘Beeee-eeeh.’ ”
” ‘Baaaa-aaa-ah.’ ”
” ‘ Bee-aaaa-aaa-eeeh.’ ”
” ‘Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeh.’ ”
We resumed driving. Time passed.
Then I said, “Do you think mountain goats are really special goats who live in the mountains? Or do you think they’re just regular goats who were hanging out at the base of the mountain and then looked up and said, ‘Hey, I should go up there.’ And then before you knew it, there’s all these regular goats up on the top of the mountain and someone decided they were ‘Mountain goats”?”
Robin shrugged. “Really wouldn’t be too different from calling hillbillies ‘Mountain people.’ Except that the goat, when at the bottom in the start of your story, wouldn’t say that he wanted to go up there. He’d say ‘Baaah.’ ”
“Beee-eeh.”
“Baaah.”
We drove on in silence. A collapsed inflatable Santa from months ago lay prone on someone’s lawn, as if shot.
“What was your goat’s name, again?” I asked.
” ‘Goat.’ ”
“Just ‘Goat’?”
“When we got her, her name was Dolly. But we just called her ‘Goat.’ ”
“So was her name Dolly, or Goat?”
“Goat. I guess.”
I needed a firmer answer. So I pressed on.
“What was her official name with the vet? Because that’s like a Social Security number for animals — whatever the vet has them recorded as.”
Robin thought for a second. “I don’t think the vet ever saw her.”
“Never?”
“No, I don’t think so. That goat never had any problems.”
“So she had no vet record?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’re telling me that this goat lived her entire life off the grid? No ID, no name, no fingerprints?”
“Well, she didn’t have fingers,” Robin said.
Time passed.
“I can’t believe your goat never saw the vet.”
“That was one healthy goat,” she recalled.
“But no vaccines? No hoof trimming? Nothing?”
Robin shook her head.
“I think you were neglecting this goat’s health,” I said.
“No, I don’t think so. She lived to be like a billion.”
I had to admit this was true. I had met Goat, back when Robin and I were just dating, and she had been approximately five hundred years old. And funny-looking, too. Goats are the most strangely put-together animals I’d ever seen, surely something that God had been either tired or drunk while assembling. Bones and joints stuck out at all odd angles. It was more like a robot made by an engineering student to fetch beer than anything organic. Even the sound it made was artificial.
“Beeee-eeeh,” I said.
“What?”
We were almost home. I was fascinated with Goat’s stellar health record but felt a sense of incompletion. Without a vet record, she had no official name. The case would never be totally closed. And another thing was nagging at me, too.
“Have you ever seen our dogs stand on the car?” I asked.
“Your car or mine?”
“Mine.”
“Not that I’ve seen.”
“Okay,” I said. “Then we can keep them. For now.”