Notes from Windward: #56


Dancing Goats


Dixie ponders a bit of pine
Folk new to these Notes generally think we're a bit nuts on the subject of goats; long-term readers tend to either share our enthusiasm or indulge it. Well, the Hard Freeze Moon is the time when the goats dance through the woods, and I've got pictures to prove it. So there.

Goats generally stroll around the woods on four legs, since if you're got them you might as well use them I guess, but it would be a mistake to think that goats are limited to the horizontal. As the grass and brush becomes dry and tasteless, a caprine eye can't help but be drawn to a tasty leaf or two or three. While mere sheep are confined to what they can find from eye level on down, the acrobatic goat has a much broader range of options.

Vertical grazing takes talent
Goats are innately cool. For the most part, they rest content in the deeply satisfying knowledge that they're goats and you're not. When it suits their purposes, they're capable of all sorts of remarkable things such as walking around on their hind legs. I tell you, it's enough to give a two-legger pause to walk up to a goat and have her look down at you. There really are people who believe that aliens have indeed landed and are living among us disguised as goats.

A few years back, one of the supermarket tabloids featured a story about a wild girl who had been adopted and cared for by a herd of goats. The piece was such a hoot that we wrote and asked permission to reprint their story in these Notes. They actually did grant permission, although I got the impression that no one had ever asked for permission to reprint one of their stories before.

Topsy joins in the dance
No one, especially a goat, want's to be left out of a good thing. Once one goat takes to the trees, she's quickly joined by others who want to see what's caught her eye. In hardly no time at all, the woods are filled with dancing goats. We normally don't talk much about this sort of thing, since flat-lander city folk tend to think that such talk is evidence of having spent one too many winters in the woods. Since I happened to have my camera with me, and since readers already know we're a bit batty on the subject anyway, I figured I might as well share these shots with you. Just be sure not to tell anyone else, since they'll probably think you're a few notches off-center too.


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