Of Seuss, Snakes, and Sick Goats

Have you ever been babysitting and try to get the kid or kids your babysitting interested in a toy, book, movie, or something and then you end up being totally more interested in it then the kid? And you think, "What!? Joe, this is so cool!" because Joe just wandered off to do something else. Well, that's what happens to me many times and I happened to be babysitting and was reading like all the Dr. Seuss books "to the kids".  Some of the best quotes come from the least expected places. "There are so many THINKS that a Thinker can think!" "THINK! You can think any THINK that you wish..." -Dr. Seuss. Wow! Now that's pretty inspiring if you think ;) about it. We can learn about anything we want to, which means there's no end to learning new things!

A book you should read. :)

And one thing that I'm learning about is how silly goats are. Since I have the honor of taking care of two goats, Peggy Sue and Nancy, I get to observe their fanatics. Peggy Sue is the boisterous and rather greedy goat. She's also the bigger of the two. Nancy is quieter but she can be pretty greedy, too. But one thing that they have in common is their love for putting their heads through the fence. They can put their heads through fine but getting them out is a different story. They a lot of times get caught on the fence and sometimes I'll come down to feed them and there one of them is with her head stuck. No matter how many times this happens, they can't seem to learn their lesson. So every time I find them in this most unfortunate situate "baa"ing off their heads, I try my best to get them out (It took Hannah, Priscilla, and I to get Nancy unstuck one time), but this Saturday I encountered a case that I simply couldn't do any thing about unless I cut the wire. I found poor Nancy with her head stuck but this time she had somehow managed to stick her head through the fence onto the other side and then had twisted her neck back around so that she had half her head back inside the fence and a horn on either side. When I came over to try to help her, she was all hot and was having trouble breathing. Dad went down to try to see if he could get her out, but we never succeeded. The distressed Nancy had to wait till her owners came to cut the wire and free her. For the last several days she's still been recovering and has two sores on her head and neck. The question remains, though, has she learned her lesson? In my opinion, probably not, and we think "Dumb goats!" But then I'm beginning to learn how silly people are. We often can't learn our lesson either.

Nancy

Speaking of sick goats, there was also a very sick copperhead. Ok, so he wasn't sick when I first encountered him. A couple mornings ago, I ran into him slithering across our path. Running back to the house, I procured a shovel and thankfully came back to find him still there. The poor guy was caught by surprise with a shovel on his neck. I will say, I'm hoping he really was dead because he did stay there with the shovel on him all day, but then later I brought him closer to the house for the funeral and the next day he wasn't there so we're hoping animal took him. To assure you, though, I'm pretty sure he was dead because he was cold and I don't think he could have lived through the chops of the shovel he bore. Sadly, though, as you may have guessed, we weren't able to have a proper funeral for him.

This is a scary picture!

His poor mangled neck.