What the Farm Teaches
What they saw when they walked through the door was a goat.
Not a decorative goat. Not the kind of goat you encounter at a petting zoo where it is merely inconvenient. A full-size Boer cross doe named Margaret who had been in my mudroom for approximately four hours because she had developed a limp that my neighbor Dale thought might be a hoof abscess and we had moved her inside to keep the leg clean and dry while we figured it out.
Margaret is approximately one hundred and thirty pounds and she has opinions.
When the door opened, she had been standing in my mudroom looking out the window at the horses with the focused resentment of an animal who considers herself above the situation she has been placed in. The sudden influx of perfume and designer luggage into her immediate environment did not improve her disposition.
My daughter-in-law Cassandra screamed.
Cassandra’s sister Denise, who was right behind her, grabbed the door frame. Her husband Phil, who I had met once at my son’s wedding, made a sound that I would describe as involuntary.
My son, Ben, stood in the middle of it with the expression of a man who had promised his wife and her family a pleasant country weekend and was beginning to understand that he had not fully read the fine print.
I was sitting on the porch with my coffee.
I did not move.
I let them absorb Margaret for a moment.
Then I stood up and walked in through the screen door and said, “Ah, good, you’ve met Margaret. Leave your bags in the hall, we’re not done with the mudroom yet.”
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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